Report from the Commission to the European Parliament and the Council. Sixth bi-annual report on the functioning of the Schengen area 1 May – 31 October 2014

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 sixth report covers the period 1 May - 31 October 2014.

The reporting period has been characterised by two main developments. Firstly, continuing migration across the Mediterranean to Europe, which reached its peak during the summer months and continued to claim lives. Secondly, by significant movement within the Schengen area of persons arriving in Italy and seeking to go to other Member States.

The overall number of detections of irregular border crossings has increased significantly over the reporting period (May-October 2014). This increase can be attributed to an unprecedented number of detections reported by Italy (nearly six times more detections by Italy in May-July 2014 compared to the same period the year before). In total, there were 81,270 detections during the first three months of the reporting period (May-July 2014, i.e. the months for which the data were available at the time of writing). This is over 2.5 times more than during the same months in 2013, when this figure was 31,406 and even higher than during the same period in 2011.

Italy reported by far the highest number of apprehensions in May-July 2014, followed by Greece. Main nationalities of the persons detected during those three months were Syrians and Eritreans.

The Commission continued to monitor the situation in Bulgaria and Italy with regard to the improvement of their respective asylum systems and will also keep monitoring, in cooperation with the concerned Member States, the possible need of using the early warning, preparedness and crisis management mechanism on the basis of Article 33 of the Dublin III Regulation. In addition Greece is implementing the National Action Plan for Asylum and Migration, which expires in December 2014. It should be noted that these Member States have made considerable efforts to stabilise and improve the situation, but further progress is still needed.

• Primary Source

EUR-Lex: COM(2014)711: Follow the progress of this report through the decision-making procedure http://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/HIS/?uri=COM:2014:711:FIN

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