The number of illegal migrants entering Europe has fallen since April after the European Union sealed a deal with Turkey to halt flows across the Aegean Sea, the border agency said, and Italy has become the new front line for refugees, mostly from Libya.
"For the first six months of 2016, there were 360,000 illegal entries in the EU, which is higher than what we saw last year, but the influx has been diminishing since April," Fabrice Leggeri, executive director of Frontex, the agency in charge of protecting the bloc's external borders, told Europe 1 Radio.
Leggeri said Italy had overtaken Greece as the primary point of entry and most migrants were now embarking for Europe in Libya. About 750 were arriving in Italy daily compared with about 50 in Greece.