European governments struggled to coordinate a response as more than a million people, most fleeing the war in Syria along with others from Afghanistan, Iraq and Eritrea, arrived by sea and overland.
Germany suspended the standard rule requiring asylum claims to be lodged in the first member state of entry, and Chancellor Angela Merkel's decision to admit large numbers became the defining political question of the year. Hungary built fencing along its southern border and several states reintroduced internal frontier checks.
The photograph of a drowned Syrian toddler on a Turkish beach in September briefly transformed the tone of public debate across the continent.
