The year-on-year growth contrasted with a decline in irregular border crossings into the EU as a whole, which were 38% down on 2023, to their lowest since 2021. The total number of detections at all EU external borders last year stood at a little over 239,000, Frontex said. 

Frontex reported that border crossings with Belarus and Ukraine primarily drove the increase via the eastern land route.  

The agency defines the eastern borders route as “a 6,000-kilometer-long land border between Belarus, Moldova, Ukraine, the Russian Federation and the EU Member States—Estonia, Finland, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Norway, Poland, Slovakia and Romania.”