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Record Number of Refugees Crossing to Europe, U.N. Says

UNITED NATIONS — Record numbers of people crossed the Mediterranean Sea in a bid to reach the shores of Europe in the first six months of this year, and most of them were entitled to be resettled as refugees under international law, the United Nations said Wednesday.

According to numbers released by the United Nations refugee agency, 137,000 people crossed from January to June, landing in Greece, Italy, Malta and Spain. That represents an 83 percent increase from the same period in 2014, and the agency added that “it is expected the numbers will continue to soar” in the second half of the year.

The three largest nationalities were Syrians, Afghans and Eritreans, which, according to the refugee agency, signals that the migrants are fleeing war or persecution and makes “the Mediterranean crisis primarily a refugee crisis.”

Of those who landed in Greece and Italy, one in three were Syrians who, the agency said, were “almost universally deemed to qualify for refugee status or other forms of protection.”

That is not likely to be welcome news to many lawmakers on the Continent. After acrimonious debate last week, the European Union scrapped a proposal to create mandatory quotas intended to spread the tens of thousands of migrants across the 28 member states of the European Union.

The union promised only to “agree by consensus” by the end of July on a plan to distribute 40,000 people among the member countries. Those who land on European shores in, say, Greece or Italy often try to go north to nations where there are better job prospects — only to be blocked.

The statistics released by the United Nations were likely to put far more pressure on all of Europe because the global refugee treaty that European countries have signed requires that people who are fleeing war and persecution be offered refuge. It is not a choice.

Those who cannot prove they are seeking refuge — many West Africans, for instance, may be escaping hunger or unemployment instead — are not entitled to the same protections.

More than 1,800 people have died while trying to make the crossing.

Sweden and Germany have taken in the largest number of refugees in the past year. In an interview here last week, Sweden’s foreign minister, Margot Wallstrom, said it was vital for Europe to come up with a way to share what she called the “costs and responsibilities” of this unprecedented global exodus.

“In the end it will create tensions; it will undermine the whole idea of us working together in the European Union to show solidarity towards each other to help to share the costs and responsibilities,” she said.

The union has for now also shelved plans to conduct military operations to sink the boats of smugglers who charge handsomely to ferry people across the Mediterranean, often in flimsy, dangerous vessels. The European Union has sought — and failed so far — to get the permission of the Libyan government to allow it to carry out those operations in Libyan waters and on Libyan shores. Europe is not likely to get any such blessings until the rival Libyan groups that control different parts of the country reach a power-sharing pact. Those negotiations are underway.

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A version of this article appears in print on  , Section A, Page 11 of the New York edition with the headline: Record Number of Migrants Crossing to Europe, U.N. Says. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

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