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BERLIN, February 21. /TASS/. Refugees trend to refuse the so-called Balkan route to Europe due to the tough control there, and instead they plan to use a more risky route across the Mediterranean Sea, Germany’s Welt am Sonntag reported on Sunday referring to data from western intelligence services.
Some 200,000 refugees now are staying along shores of the Mediterranean Sea in Libya, the newspaper writes. Most of them come from Eritrea, Somali and Nigeria. They are waiting for better weather conditions to cross the sea on the way to the European Union.
At the same time, the newspaper writes, with time refugees may also consider another route - from Turkey across the Black Sea or across territories of Georgia and Russia.
The European border agency Frontex reported over 1.5 million migrants in the EU countries last year. The inflow reduced slightly in January and early February of the current year, though most experts explain it by unfavorable weather conditions and storms in the Mediterranean Sea, not by the EU or Turkish measures to limit migration. Specialists fear by summer the inflow will approach the year of last year or will be even above it.