Fortress Europe | Fewer asylum applications in the EU, more deaths at the borders

Syrian migrants on board a rubber boat between Izmir in Turkey and the Greek island of Chios Photo: afp/Bulent Kilic Conservatives and right-wingers in Europe are popping the champagne corks: The number of asylum applications in the EU has fallen by almost a quarter this year. This was reported by Welt am Sonntag, citing previously unpublished figures from the European Union Asylum Agency. This wet dream of migration hardliners like Alexander Dobrindt (CSU) and Björn Höcke (AfD) is only applauded by those who ignore images of corpses washed up on Mediterranean beaches and torture prisons in Libya. "That's a tragedy, and what they're doing in Libya is terrible!" some people might now object. Maybe some Greens are even worried about what's happening at Europe's borders. But moral outrage alone has no place here.

With regard to these figures, Federal Interior Minister Dobrindt spoke of the success of national and European measures. Unfortunately he is right. And not in the sense that this policy deters people from making their way into the cozy hammocks of the German social system. But simply because the EU is killing people through its rigorous isolation policy.

The decline in asylum applications is not because there are currently fewer reasons to flee your own country in the world. That would actually be a reason to celebrate. There are no fewer reasons to flee, but there are more and more reasons not to arrive: the new reform of the Common European Asylum System, agreements with Turkey, Libya and Morocco to "defend migration", pushbacks from Frontex and pullbacks from their Libyan buddies.

What the European Union has been doing at its external borders in recent years is costing human lives. According to estimates by the International Organization for Migration, over 1,400 people died in the Mediterranean alone in the first half of 2026. Compared to the same period last year, an increase of around 66 percent, not including the number of unreported cases. Deaths in other places on the escape route are added to this.

In order to reduce the numbers, no EU politician has to drive to the border and hold a gun to a refugee's head. It is enough to meet with Libyan politicians in a nicely air-conditioned room and pass money over the table for their “coast guard”. Or assigning Seawatch a port four days away after a successful sea rescue. Who notices which little inflatable boat disappears quietly from the radar during these four days?

After all, the Mediterranean is big. The responsibility that the EU bears for every single person who dies on the way to Europe is even greater.

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