European Migrant Crisis (2015): Refugees and Europe's Response

The European migrant crisis was a period in 2015 and 2016 when the number of refugees and migrants arriving in the European Union rose to levels not seen since the Second World War. More than a million people crossed the Mediterranean in 2015, most of them fleeing the wars in Syria, Afghanistan and Iraq, and many then travelled overland through the Balkans towards Germany and Sweden. The crisis tested the EU’s asylum rules and open internal borders and reshaped politics across the continent.

Causes

The main driver was the Syrian civil war, which began in 2011 and had displaced around half of Syria’s population by 2015. By the end of that year more than four million Syrians were registered as refugees, most of them in Turkey, Lebanon and Jordan. The rise of ISIS in Syria and Iraq, continuing conflict in Afghanistan, and repression in Eritrea added to the flows.

Conditions in neighbouring countries worsened in 2015, as savings ran out, work permits were scarce and UN food aid was cut for lack of funds. Many concluded that they had no future in the region. Smugglers offered crossings from the Turkish coast to Greek islands only a few kilometres away, which were far shorter and cheaper than the earlier route from Libya to Italy.

Who arrived

According to UNHCR, about half of those who reached Greece by sea in 2015 were Syrians, with Afghans and Iraqis the next largest groups; together these three nationalities made up the large majority. Most had strong claims to refugee protection, and recognition rates for Syrians in EU countries were very high. Others came from Eritrea, Pakistan, Iran, West Africa and the Balkans, and some, especially on the route through Libya, were classed as economic migrants with weaker asylum claims.

The terms used were contested. Aid agencies and the UN stressed that most arrivals were refugees fleeing war, while some politicians spoke of “migrants” or “illegal immigrants”. Many encyclopedias and news organisations use “refugee and migrant crisis” to cover both groups. Men made up the majority of adult arrivals in 2015, but the share of women and children rose sharply towards the end of the year as whole families followed.

The Mediterranean crossings

The central Mediterranean route from Libya to Italy was already busy in 2014. In April 2015 a fishing boat capsized off Libya with an estimated 700 to 800 people on board, the deadliest single shipwreck of the period, prompting the EU to expand sea operations.

From the spring of 2015 the eastern Mediterranean route became dominant. Inflatable dinghies and small boats crossed from Turkey to Lesbos, Chios, Kos and other Greek islands, where volunteers and local people helped arrivals ashore. On 2 September 2015 a photograph of the body of three-year-old Alan Kurdi, a Syrian boy drowned near Bodrum in Turkey, was published around the world and became a symbol of the crisis.

The Balkan route and the summer of 2015

From Greece, most people moved north through North Macedonia and Serbia to Hungary, aiming for Germany, Austria or Sweden. Under the EU’s Dublin rules, asylum seekers were supposed to apply in the first member state they entered, but Greece and Italy could not register the numbers, and many travellers avoided registration.

In late August 2015, 71 people were found dead in an abandoned lorry on an Austrian motorway. Thousands were stranded at Budapest’s Keleti railway station when Hungary stopped them boarding trains west. On the night of 4–5 September, Germany and Austria agreed to let them enter, an exceptional decision taken by Chancellor Angela Merkel and Austrian Chancellor Werner Faymann.

Merkel had already told a press conference on 31 August, “Wir schaffen das” (“We can do this”). Crowds welcomed trains in Munich, but by 13 September Germany reintroduced temporary checks on its border with Austria. Hungary, under Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, completed a fence on its border with Serbia on 15 September and with Croatia in October, diverting the route through Croatia and Slovenia.

Europe’s political response

EU governments divided sharply. On 22 September 2015 interior ministers agreed by qualified majority to relocate 120,000 asylum seekers from Greece and Italy, on top of an earlier plan for 40,000, over the objections of the Czech Republic, Hungary, Romania and Slovakia. The scheme moved only about 35,000 people by its end in 2017. Several Schengen states reintroduced internal border checks.

The issue became entwined with security fears after the Paris attacks of 13 November 2015, two of whose perpetrators had entered Europe through Greece posing as refugees, and with public anger over mass sexual assaults in Cologne on New Year’s Eve 2015–16. Support grew for anti-immigration parties, such as the Alternative for Germany, and migration featured prominently in the Brexit referendum campaign.

Closing the routes

In February and March 2016, Austria and the Balkan states imposed daily caps, and North Macedonia closed its border to most migrants, leaving thousands stranded at Idomeni in northern Greece. On 18 March 2016 the EU and Turkey, represented by Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu, agreed the EU-Turkey Statement. From 20 March, new irregular arrivals on the Greek islands could be returned to Turkey; for every Syrian returned, the EU would resettle another from Turkey; and the EU pledged 6 billion euros for refugees in Turkey.

Arrivals in Greece fell from over 850,000 in 2015 to about 175,000 in 2016, most of them before the deal. The central Mediterranean route to Italy remained busy, with around 180,000 arrivals in 2016, and deaths at sea reached a record of over 5,000 that year.

By the numbers

Legacy

Reception put heavy strain on local authorities. German towns housed new arrivals in gymnasiums, tents and former barracks, and Sweden, which received about 163,000 asylum applications in 2015, one of the highest numbers per head of population in the EU, introduced identity checks on travellers from Denmark in January 2016. Thousands of volunteers across Europe provided food, clothing and language lessons, a movement Germans called the “welcome culture” (Willkommenskultur).

Germany received more asylum seekers than any other EU country, and by the 2020s a large share of the Syrians who arrived in 2015 had found work and many had become German citizens. The crisis left lasting divisions within the EU over burden-sharing. After years of negotiation, the EU adopted a Pact on Migration and Asylum in 2024, designed to speed up border procedures and share responsibility among member states.

Timeline

• 2015, 19 April: A shipwreck off Libya kills an estimated 700–800 people.
• 2015, 27 August: 71 bodies are found in a lorry in Austria.
• 2015, 31 August: Angela Merkel says “Wir schaffen das”.
• 2015, 2 September: Images of Alan Kurdi’s body draw global attention.
• 2015, 4–5 September: Austria and Germany admit thousands stranded in Hungary.
• 2015, 15 September: Hungary seals its border with Serbia.
• 2015, 22 September: EU ministers approve relocation of 120,000 asylum seekers.
• 2016, 18 March: The EU-Turkey Statement is agreed, taking effect on 20 March.

Why it matters

The 2015 crisis was the largest movement of refugees into Europe since 1945. It exposed the weaknesses of the EU’s common asylum system, strengthened populist and anti-immigration movements, and made migration one of the defining political issues in Europe for the following decade.