Balkan Route
The Balkan Route is a set of trafficking corridors used primarily for moving opiates from the Golden Crescent to European consumer markets. It is commonly described as the most direct overland route from Afghanistan via Iran and Türkiye, and then onward through countries of the Balkan Peninsula into the European Union.
The term is used in law enforcement and policy reporting to describe not a single fixed itinerary, but a dynamic network of paths that adapt to border enforcement, geopolitical conflicts, and logistical opportunities. While historically dominant for heroin, the route has evolved into a multi-commodity corridor, facilitating the movement of cocaine, methamphetamine, and illicit precursor chemicals such as acetic anhydride.
Beyond illicit commodities, the Balkan Route is a critical corridor for irregular migration and human smuggling into the European Union. It gained global prominence during the 2015 European migrant crisis, serving as the primary entry point for hundreds of thousands of asylum seekers and refugees traversing from Turkey and Greece toward Western Europe. Although coordinated border closures in 2016 formally shut down the humanitarian corridor, the route remains active for migrant smuggling networks, which often exploit the same physical infrastructure, border vulnerabilities, and corrupt officials used for narcotics trafficking.
History
The historical origin of the Balkan Route and its cultural history dates back to the Neolithic era. At that time, the first farmers reached Transdanubia and the northern Balkans via the central Balkan region as part of the migration originating from the Near East. This marked the beginning of the Neolithic Revolution in Europe, characterized by the transition from hunting and gathering to agriculture.The Danube Road ran from present-day Belgrade to the Danube's mouth at the Black Sea, stretching along the edge of the Balkans and connecting the observation posts and fortifications of the lower Danubian Limes. The Via Pontica was the connecting road from the Danube Delta to the Bosphorus along the Black Sea coast. The Via Egnatia was built in the 1st century BC as an extension of the Via Appia across the Strait of Otranto, serving as the fastest connection from Rome to the Bosphorus. The Via Militaris was built in the 1st century AD; due to its route through the Balkan valleys, it had relatively moderate gradients. This made it a significant strategic route, allowing for extensive troop movements—even with heavy Roman war chariots—between the northern, southeastern European, and Near Eastern provinces of the Roman Empire in any weather.
Since late antiquity, the Balkan route via Constantinople had become an important connection to the Silk Road, and the Republic of Venice conducted a considerable portion of its trade along this corridor.
The Balkan route has long been one of the most important trade and military roads in Europe. It was central to the Crusades, the Venetians, Constantinople, and the Habsburg Monarchy.
Development in the Modern Era
At the Congress of Berlin in 1878, which ended the Great Balkan Crisis, it was decided to develop the Balkans by building a railway connection to Istanbul. Within the Ottoman sphere of influence, the railway was built by the Chemins de fer Orientaux under Baron Maurice de Hirsch. In 1888, with the closing of the final gap in Bulgaria, the continuous connection between Vienna and Istanbul was inaugurated. It became famous primarily through the luxurious Orient Express which operated on the line between Paris and Istanbul.During World War II, European refugees used the Balkan route to reach Turkey, and from there, some continued to Middle East Relief and Refugee Administration camps in the Middle East. Escape and immigration routes for Jews organized by Betar, Hechaluz, Mossad LeAliyah Bet, and private organizers into Mandatory Palestine led—within the framework of Aliyah Bet—down the Danube and then across the Black Sea and the Bosphorus. After the Anschluss of Austria in 1938, Adolf Eichmann brought emigration to Palestine from the entire Reich territory under his control via the Central Agency for Jewish Emigration in Vienna. To combat illegal immigration to Palestine, the British government pressured Romania, Bulgaria, Greece, Yugoslavia, and Hungary to dismantle local Aliyah Bet organizations.
The Yugoslav Wars and the subsequent collapse of state institutions in the 1990s led to the "institutionalization" of the drug trade. As formal trade routes were disrupted, organized crime syndicates—particularly from Albania, Serbia, and Bulgaria—developed sophisticated underground networks that leveraged the chaos of the conflict. During this period, the Balkan route evolved into a "multi-commodity" corridor; while heroin remained the staple, the infrastructure began to be used for the trafficking of human beings, illegal weapons, and cigarette smuggling.
In the 1960s, the term Gastarbeiterroute emerged for the route across the Balkans used by migrant workers. Concurrently, the route became the world's primary corridor for illicit heroin trafficking, linking opium production in the Golden Crescent to Western European markets via Turkey. By the early 1970s, it had largely superseded the French Connection, with the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime identifying it as the busiest drug trafficking land route in the world.
In the 1990s, the expansion of the Balkan route began to better connect Eastern European countries to the global division of labor. Due to the breakup of Yugoslavia and the accompanying Yugoslav Wars, the traditional route section via the Brotherhood and Unity Highway was avoided.
Within the framework of the Trans-European Networks concept, work is being done on ten Pan-European corridors to expand transport infrastructure in Eastern and Southeastern Europe. In this context, Corridors IV, VII, VIII, and X on the Balkan transit routes are being upgraded to improve water, rail, and road infrastructure.
China is investing in the expansion of the Budapest–Belgrade–Skopje–Athens railway to Central Europe as part of the Belt and Road Initiative.
Illicit drug trafficking use of the "Balkan route" (late 20th century–present)
In law-enforcement and drug-market analysis, the term Balkan route is also used for a set of trafficking corridors that have historically been a principal pathway for moving heroin from Afghanistan into European consumer markets via Balkan states, rather than a single fixed itinerary.EUDA describes the Balkan route as the "shortest and most direct route" to European consumer markets, noting that heroin on this route usually enters the EU at land border crossing points in Bulgaria or Greece. EUDA further distinguishes three branches from Türkiye: a southern branch, a central branch, and a northern branch.
EUDA also notes that this corridor has been associated with "reverse" trafficking flows of heroin-processing precursor chemicals from Europe in the opposite direction along the same corridor. In addition, EUDA reports a possible shift in some trafficking methods toward maritime transport from Turkish ports to EU ports in the Adriatic and Mediterranean, citing large seizures linked to this modus operandi.
UNODC has published economic analyses of opiate trafficking on the Balkan route, including its assessment of the illicit proceeds generated by Afghan opiates trafficked to European markets via this corridor.
In the 2020s, Balkan-based organised crime networks have also been implicated in large-scale cocaine trafficking into Europe, in addition to the region's long association with heroin transit. Eurojust reported that an Albanian-led network trafficked large quantities of cocaine from South America to Italian seaports concealed in container shipments, and that a coordinated operation resulted in arrests and multi-tonne seizures.
Migration movements of the 2010s
By the early 2010s, the Balkan route underwent a significant diversification. While it remained the conduit for roughly 80% of Europe's heroin, it also became a major entry point for cocaine from South America, arriving via maritime ports in Albania, Montenegro, and Croatia before being transported north. Law enforcement agencies, including Europol, noted a "convergence" of illicit flows; the same criminal networks managing these drug shipments often controlled the logistics for the massive increase in people smuggling during the 2015 migration crisis, utilizing identical safe houses, forged documents, and clandestine border crossings.Many of the migrants in the European refugee crisis who take a Balkan route come from Syria, Iraq, and the wider southern Central Asia region, particularly Afghanistan and Pakistan. However—after the Mediterranean routes became more difficult or expensive—migrants also arrived from North African countries, Eritrea, and Ethiopia. These migrants generally do not wish to settle in the economically weaker Balkan countries but strive for residency in Central Europe, the British Isles, or Northern Europe.
Additionally, for a time, the relatively underdeveloped Balkan countries of North Macedonia, Albania, Montenegro, and Kosovo were themselves countries of origin.
At the beginning of the refugee crisis in 2011, the Eastern Balkan route was the main route. For 2012 and 2013, Frontex recorded 12,000 passages on the Eastern Balkan route and 4,000 on the Western Balkan route—an enormous increase compared to previous years, but far fewer than in 2015. The situation was perceived as so critical that the first Western Balkans Conference took place in November 2013. Following the construction of the Greek border fence with Turkey in 2012, the Bulgarian fence with Turkey was built in 2014; this effectively closed the Eastern Balkan route. Migration shifted from land borders in Turkey to routes via the coastal Greek Aegean islands. This shift was in the interest of Bulgaria and Romania as well as Turkey, which would not have tolerated mass movements across the Bosphorus. In European Frontex jargon, this route is called the Eastern Mediterranean route.
Some of the islands of Greece lie within sight of the Turkish coast; refugees can reach them on simple boats. Winds, ocean currents, and swells can be dangerous; boats sometimes capsize, and people drown. In 2015, Greece allowed refugees to travel on to the mainland; from there, most moved to one of the border crossings on the Greece–North Macedonia border and some to the Albania–Greece border. Following the Syrian civil war and persistent droughts, but also due to a lack of funds at the UNHCR, humanitarian conditions in refugee camps in Lebanon, Jordan, and Turkey became partly catastrophic by early summer 2015, setting the Levant in motion. During the hot summer of 2015, hiking conditions in Europe were also favorable.
In 2015, Greece did not register migrants on the Greek islands or upon their transport to the mainland, thereby violating the Schengen Agreement. At the Greece–North Macedonia border, many migrants tried to enter North Macedonia. North Macedonia and Serbia are not EU members; the EU external border therefore lay at Hungary and Croatia. Until Hungary built the border fence with Serbia and closed its borders to refugees in late September 2015, many refugees traveled via Hungary and Austria.
This route became publicly known only at the end of August 2015, when refugees "stuck" in Hungary were allowed to travel to Germany. At the end of August, due to ambiguous statements by the Federal Office for Migration and Refugees and Chancellor Angela Merkel, the opinion or hope spread among migrants that Germany would in the future grant Syrian refugees asylum in principle, without examination and without regard for the Schengen/Dublin procedure. The situation intensified again instead of subsiding with the end of summer as hoped. The destination country for the majority of migrants was Germany; Sweden, previously a frequent destination, radically changed its refugee policy during the autumn of 2015. In transit countries, refugees often traveled by buses, taxis, or trains; state borders were crossed on foot.
A flight via the Balkan route used to take weeks; when some transit countries transported refugees to the next border, it went much faster.
In early February 2017, a spokesperson for the Federal Ministry of the Interior stated that while illegal migration via the Western Balkans had been significantly reduced, it was continuing. In 2018, about 41,000 people used the Balkan route, and in 2019 about 82,000 people.
In July 2019, the Balkan route received greater media attention again due to reports of inhumane conditions at the Vučjak refugee camp near the Bosnian town of Bihać.