Remarks by Commissioner Brunner at the press point on a five-point plan to strengthen resilience and security of EU external borders

Later this week will discuss at the Justice and Home Affairs Council in Luxembourg, where we stand and what we still need to do on migration. Let me give you a short update:

Our European Migration Reform is paying off. Across Europe's external borders, we see a significant decrease of illegal border crossings.

In total, -55% in the last two years and an additional third this year.

This leads to record lows in asylum applications – especially in the countries that used to be main destinations.

Sweden: lowest ever recorded. Austria now returns more people than it receives asylum claims from — the first time that has happened in over two decades. And in Munich, I was told German asylum applications are down 80 percent compared to the same time two years ago.

That is not a small improvement. That is a real shift.

We are also improving on returns. And our new rules will reinforce this.

The Pact is our foundation. And it is part of the solution, and in a couple of weeks will we report on its progress.

But a foundation is something you build on — not something you stop at. That is exactly what our five-year migration strategy from January has already signaled. Good policy never stops evolving.

We are bringing our European house in order.

A significant part of our efforts depends on protecting our external EU borders. And the Entry Exit System shows, how we are stepping up this work: over 210 million entries & exits of non-EU citizens registered, 70.000 stopped at the border due to wrong or false documents and almost 2.000 people presenting a security threat, connected to terrorism or drugs trafficking.

It is a significant boost for our security: with it, we know who enters our Union, when and where and who has to leave it.

And still: the events from this summer showed that images sometimes overshadow the best statistics.