Keleti train station Budapest Refugee crisis 2015.
The European migrant crisis, also known as the refugee crisis, was a period characterised by high numbers of people arriving in the European Union (EU) from across the Mediterranean Sea or overland through Southeast Europe. The migrant crisis (officially from 2015 to 2019) was part of a pattern of increased immigration to Europe from other continents which began in the mid-20th century. Between January 2015 and March 2016, according to the UNHCR, the top three nationalities among over one million Mediterranean Sea arrivals were Syrian refugees (46.7%), Afghan refugees (20.9%) and Iraqi refugees (9.4%). Opposition to immigration in many European countries appeared to result partly from the socio-economic threat they were perceived to represent. According to the President of the EC in November 2015, there was a "race against time" to save the "Schengen Agreement". The number of illegal crossings fallen from 1.8 million in 2015 to 204,219 in 2017. In March 2019, the EC declared the migrant crisis to be at an end.