The EU’s border agency, Frontex, says smugglers are using a new route to get migrants into Europe by loading them onto cargo ships from Turkey to Italy.
“There is definitely a new route opening up,” a spokesperson at the Warsaw-based agency told this website on Monday (5 January).
Around 17 cargo vessels have been intercepted on the route since July.
Frontex says the large cargo ships, measuring around 100 metres in length, are often purchased from scrapyards and then set s...
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Nikolaj joined EUobserver in 2012 and covers home affairs. He is originally from Denmark, but spent much of his life in France and in Belgium. He was awarded the King Baudouin Foundation grant for investigative journalism in 2010.