Latest Migration News
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Recent highlights
In the central Mediterranean, at least 40 people, including children, have drowned in a shipwreck off the coast of Tunisia, the BBC reported on 23 October 2025. The boat was carrying around 70 people and sank close to the port of Mahdia, Tunisia, marking one of the region’s deadliest maritime disasters this year. The 30 survivors were rescued by the Tunisian coastguard.
In the western Mediterranean, a boat carrying 140 migrants traveling from Libya to Italy came under fire by the Libyan coastguard, InfoMigrants reported on 14 October 2025. The Italian coastguard stated it had opened an investigation, after rescuing three people requiring urgent medical care from the boat. The individuals were transferred to the port of Pozzallo in Sicily. This report comes shortly after the NGO AlarmPhone reported on Sunday, 12 October, that the Libyan coastguard had opened fire at a vessel carrying 113 migrants southeast of Malta, killing two people – information that has not yet independently been confirmed. It is not clear whether the two events are connected.
In the eastern Mediterranean, 17 people have died in a shipwreck off the coast of Turkey on Friday, 24 October 2025. The vessel had departed from Bodrum in Turkey and quickly started to fill with water. According to the Turkish coastguard, two people survived, one of them an Afghan national who reached a nearby island after swimming for 6 hours.
Positive News
As reported by InfoMigrants on 21 October 2025, a Belgian court ruled on 9 October that the government’s denial of accommodation to an Afghan family is illegal. The family of 5, including three under-aged children, had been sleeping on the streets of Brussels for months after Belgian authorities refused to provide them with accommodation, arguing that the family already had been granted asylum in Greece. However, the Court ruled the Belgian government had violated its obligation to individually examine the asylum claims, thus failing to consider their situation of vulnerability “knowing that the family is composed of three minor children, one of whom requires urgent medical care”. Furthermore, the Court’s judges highlighted the critical situation for refugees and asylum seekers in Greece, stating that “it is proven and widely recognized that refugee status in Greece offers no guarantees and that those who benefit from it actually find themselves in a situation of extreme precariousness”.
EU updates
In a press release published on 29 October 2025, the Council of Europe’s Division on Migration and Refugees announced the publication of a new toolkit for parliamentarians on preventing and addressing migrant disappearances. The toolkit is published by the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) and offers practical and concrete guidance on the actions parliamentarians can take. The 20-page guide outlines the key public policy questions related to migrant disappearances, explains how parliamentarians and other policymakers can address them, and highlights noteworthy initiatives from across Europe and beyond.
In a press statement from 27 October 2025, Frontex announced that at the invitation of the Italian Ministry of Interior, it had conducted a two-week test of the new EU screening process on the island of Lampedusa, in cooperation with Italian authorities, the European Union Agency for Asylum, and Europol. The pilot exercise is a part of the preparations for the implementation of the EU Pact on Migration and Asylum, and took place from 13 to 24 October. It assessed the new Screening Toolbox, standardised tools supporting the forthcoming EU screening regulation under real operational conditions with 240 irregular arrivals, to improve workflows and coordination among agencies.
As reported by euronews on 22 October 2025, following the EU-Egypt summit which took place in Brussels on 22 October 2025, the EU has signed a deal providing Egypt with an increased financial support of 75 million euros. According to officials, the funding aims to advance socio-economic growth and resilience by improving access to health, education, water and sanitation, in particular for women and young people. The grant is part of a macro-financial framework signed in March 2024, which provides 7.4 billion euros to Egypt between 2024 and 2027. The 2024 agreement has strengthened EU-Egypt relations in six key areas: political relations, economic stability, trade and investment, migration and mobility, security and demography, and human capital.
Countries
Return Mania
Mapping policies and practices in the EuroMed region
The research provides an overview of the current return policies and practices in the Euro-Mediterranean region and sheds a light on the violations of human rights entailed by this “return obsession”, which is shared across Member States, EU institutions and third countries alike. The report covers national return policies and practices in the Mashreq and Maghreb regions, focusing on returns from Turkey and Lebanon to Syria, and on readmission agreements between Italy and Tunisia, Spain and Morocco as well as France and Morocco. It also looks at returns from Germany and Italy to Egypt. Read More