page_title: European migrant crisis
section_title: Italy
hierarchical_section_title: European migrant crisis / Developments / Italy
caption_attribution_description: English: Eritrean migrants arrive in Messina.
context_page_description: The European migrant crisis, also known as the refugee crisis, was a period characterised by high numbers of people arriving in the European Union overseas from across the Mediterranean Sea or overland through Southeast Europe. In March 2019, the European Commission declared the migrant crisis to be at an end.
  The migrant crisis was part of a pattern of increased immigration to Europe from other continents which began in the mid-20th century. The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees observed that from January 2015 to March 2016, the top three nationalities among over one million refugees arriving from the Mediterranean Sea were Syrian, Afghan and Iraqi.
  Many refugees that arrived in Italy and Greece came from countries where armed conflict was ongoing or which otherwise were considered to be "refugee-producing" and for whom international protection is needed. However, a smaller proportion was from elsewhere, and for many of these individuals, the term "migrant" would be correct. Immigrants included asylum seekers and economic migrants.
context_section_description: Some Italian towns and cities disobeyed instructions from the national government to house migrants. The Mafia Capitale investigation revealed that the Italian Mafia profited from the migrant crisis and exploited refugees. Pope Francis thanked the Italian navy for their migrant rescue effort.
  The murder of Ashley Ann Olsen in her Italian apartment by an illegal immigrant from Senegal rapidly acquired political significance in the context of the European migrant crisis. The police chief of Florence addressed safety concerns and "assur[ed] the public that Florence remained safe" in the wake of the Olsen murder.
  Since 2014, thousands of migrants have tried every month to cross the Central Mediterranean to Italy, risking their lives on unsafe boats including fishing trawlers. Many of them were fleeing poverty-stricken homelands or war-torn countries and sought economic opportunity within the EU. Italy, and, in particular, its southern island of Lampedusa, received enormous numbers of Africans and Middle-Easterners transported by smugglers and NGOs operating along the ungoverned coast of the failed state of Libya.
  In 2014, 170,100 migrants arrived in Italy by sea, a 296 percent increase compared to 2013. 141,484 of the travellers were ferried over from Libya. Most of the migrants had come from Syria, Eritrea, and various countries in West Africa.
  From January to April 2015, about 1600 migrants died on the route from Libya to Lampedusa, making it the deadliest migrant route in the world. As a consequence of the April 2015 Libya migrant shipwrecks, the EU launched a military operation known as Operation Sophia. More than 13,000 migrants had been rescued from the sea in the course of the operation as of April 2016.
  There were 153,842 Mediterranean sea arrivals to Italy in 2015, 9 percent less than the previous year; most of the refugees and migrants came from Eritrea, Nigeria, and Somalia, whereas the number of Syrian refugees sharply decreased, as most of them took the Eastern Mediterranean route from Turkey to Greece.
  The first three months of 2016 saw an increase in the number of migrants rescued at sea being brought to southern Italian ports. In April 2016, nearly 6,000 mostly sub-Saharan African migrants landed in Italy in four days. In June 2016, over 10,000 migrants were rescued in four days.
  In 2016, 181,100 migrants arrived in Italy by sea. In April 2017, more than 8,000 migrants were rescued near Libya and brought to Italy in three days. Based on UN data, about 80,000 refugees were registered at Italian refugee centers in the first half of 2017, an increase of 14 percent when compared to the same time period in 2016. In June 2017, 10,000 asylum seekers were picked up in the Mediterranean sea by the Italian coastguard and other naval vessels in a couple of days. EU ambassador Maurizio Massari expressed concern about the uptake of refugee arrivals on Italy's coastline, which would have reached 200,000 in 2017. As a result, foreign aid vessels docking in Italian ports were no longer able to do so because of stricter admission policies and exceeded limits in Italian asylum centers. In February 2017 the Italian government fund Libyan coast guard; since then many migrants were forced to go back to Libya.
  In July 2017, Italy drew up a code of conduct for NGO rescue vessels delivering migrants to Italian ports. These rules included:
  A prohibition from entering the territorial waters of Libya, except in situations of imminent danger.
  A prohibition from switching off the Automatic Identification System (AIS) and LRIT transponders if they are installed on the ship.
  A prohibition from signaling human traffickers with flares or radio to coordinate with them when to send out their dinghies.
  A prohibition from transferring those rescued onto other vessels.
  A commitment to having a policeman to travel on board whenever requested in order to identify and prosecute human traffickers among the migrants.
  The Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International criticised the code of conduct and some NGOs like MSF refused to sign. Italian authorit
caption: Eritrean migrants in Messina, October 2015
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