Report from the Commission to the European Parliament and the Council. Seventh bi-annual report on the functioning of the Schengen area 1 November 2014 – 30 April 2015

As announced by the Commission on 16 September 2011 in its Communication on strengthening Schengen governance and supported by the Council on 8 March 2012, the Commission submits bi-annual reports to the European Parliament and to the Council on the functioning of the Schengen area. This seventh report covers the period 1 November 2014 - 30 April 2015. It is put forward just before the anniversary of the Schengen Agreement which was signed on 14 June 1985.

The reporting period was characterised by continuing migration across the Mediterranean to Europe, a serious number of tragedies and by the increasing threat posed by radicalised persons, including the foreign terrorist fighters having returned to Europe, which was underscored by the terrorist attacks in France and Denmark and the prevented attack in Belgium.

The annual number of detections of irregular border crossings has increased significantly during 2014 and was the highest since the FRAN (Frontex Risk Analysis Network) data collection was started in 2007. There were nearly 284,000 detections during last year, a double of the peak year of 2011 (the number of detections in 2013 was around 107,000). Equally important, the number of detections for the first five months of the reporting period (November 2014 - March 2015, i.e. months for which consolidated data were available) was over 3 times higher than during the same period a year ago, reaching over 111,000 cases.

Italy continued to report by far the highest number of apprehensions in 2014, followed by Greece and Hungary. As in 2013, the main nationalities of the persons detected during 2014 were Syrians and Eritreans. The main routes used in 2014 were the Central Mediterranean (nearly four-fold increase from 2013, representing 60% of all detections), Eastern Mediterranean (double compared to the same period in 2013, although yet remaining below the record years of 2010-2011) and Western Balkans (more than double of 2013). For both Central Mediterranean and Western Balkans route the number of apprehensions in 2014 was the highest ever since the start of FRAN data collection in 2007.

EUR-Lex: COM(2015)236: Follow the progress of this report through the decision-making procedure http://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/HIS/?uri=COM:2015:236:FIN

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