Reading the new migration figures from Brussels

The European Commission released its annual migration statistics last week, and the headlines have been predictably divergent. Depending on which outlet you read, arrivals are either at a five-year low or at their highest since 2016. Both claims are, in a narrow technical sense, true. The question is which number you are counting.

Let me try to be precise about what the report actually contains.

First arrivals — people entering the EU for the first time and applying for international protection — fell by fourteen percent in 2025 compared to the previous year. This is the figure cited by those arguing that recent border policies are working.

Secondary movements — people who entered the EU in one member state and then moved, legally or otherwise, to another — increased by twenty-three percent. This is the figure cited by those arguing that the system is not working at all, merely redistributing.

Neither figure tells you much about what will happen next. Migration statistics are, by their nature, backward-looking: they describe what has already occurred, in conditions that no longer exist, producing pressures that have already shifted.

What the report does not contain — cannot contain, given how the data is collected — is any reliable account of the motivations of those who moved, the conditions they left behind, or the degree to which EU policy, as opposed to conditions in origin countries, explains the change in numbers.