"Irregular crossings into the EU had been climbing in recent years, with Brussels data from Eurodac, the EU's biometric common asylum registration system released on Tuesday showing a rise of 62.3 percent in the number of cases between 2007 and 2008. However, the number dropped by a whopping 50 percent in the last year. At the sqm time, the number of asylum seekers in Europe rose by eight percent in 2009." (Quoted from article)