Despite years of containment policies at its borders, Europe remains more exposed than ever to migration pressure from the south. 2023 has confirmed the upward trend in the number of people coming to the continent via the Mediterranean Sea and even – a new phenomenon – via the Atlantic Ocean (and the Spanish Canary Islands).

According to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), 266,940 migrants and refugees, 97% of whom came by sea, landed in the Southern European countries of Spain, Italy, Greece, Malta and Cyprus over the course of the year.

This is evidence of the erosion of the European Union's (EU) border control "outsourcing" measures, which have been increasingly negotiated with countries on the southern shores of the Mediterranean. Such a surge marks an increase of 67% – or almost two-thirds – compared to the number of arrivals in 2022. Only in 2016 and 2015, when Europe was facing an unprecedented migration crisis, were the numbers higher (373,652 and 1.03 million, respectively). The downturn that followed this historic peak has stopped, and the curve is rising again.

Italy, which absorbs 59% of the migratory flow crossing the "mare nostrum," has a front-row seat. Its prime minister, Georgia Meloni, has been leaning on this when lobbying Brussels for greater solidarity from her EU partners. The hesitations surrounding the drafting of the Pact on Migration and Asylum, which was eventually agreed between the European Council and the European Parliament on December 20, 2023, bear the mark of this.

The main source of the 2023 migration rebound is on the Tunisian coast, more precisely in the Sfax region, from which most of the boats bound for the Italian island of Lampedusa, just 160 kilometers to the northeast, depart. Tunisia alone accounted for two-thirds of all migrants and refugees arriving in Italy (97,306 out of 157,301). Unprecedented in the post-independence era, this phenomenon is fueling tensions between Tunis and Brussels. When pressed by the EU to improve the surveillance of Tunisia's coast in return for financial support (€105 million) to be allocated to the fight against "irregular migration," President Kais Saied retorted that Tunisia "cannot be Europe's border guard."

Tunisian nationals make only a modest contribution to the flow, accounting for just 9.8% of the total. The route from southeast Tunisia to Lampedusa is in fact mostly taken by people from West Africa, especially from Guinea, Côte d'Ivoire, Burkina Faso, Mali and Cameroon.

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