In 2016, a drop in detections reported at the external borders with Turkey and Western Balkan countries led to an over­ all decrease in detections of illegal bor­der-­crossing at EU level. However, with over half a million detections (511 371), the figure is still significantly higher than any yearly total between 2010 (104 060) and 2014 (282 933). This means that the pressure on the external bor­ders of the EU remained exceptionally high in 2016.