Three times as many people sought to reach the European Union across the Mediterranean in the first three months of 2023 compared to a year before, the bloc's border agency said, as the U.N. migration arm decried the deadliest first quarter since 2017.
Overall, the EU agency Frontex reported 54,000 irregular crossings into the bloc via all routes in the first quarter of the year, up a fifth from 2022.
