Friday, 8 May 2009

Asylum in the EU in 2008: around 20 000 asylum applicants registered each month in EU27

The following is the Press Release of the European Commission:

In 2008, there were nearly 240 000 asylum applicants1 registered in the EU27, or 480 applicants per million inhabitants. The main countries of citizenship of these applicants were Iraq (29 000 or 12% of the total number of applicants), Russia (21 100 or 9%), Somalia (14 300 or 6%), Serbia (13 600 or 6%) and Afghanistan (12 600 or 5%).

These data on asylum applicants in the EU27 are taken from a report2 issued by Eurostat, the Statistical Office of the European Communities.

Highest number of applicants per inhabitant recorded in Malta and Cyprus

In 2008, among the Member States for which data are available, the highest number of applicants were registered in France (41 800 applicants). The United Kingdom recorded 30 500 applicants, however this figure covers only new applicants. Germany (26 900), Sweden (24 900), Greece (19 900), Belgium (15 900) and the Netherlands (15 300) followed.

When compared with the population of each Member State, the highest rates of applicants registered were recorded in Malta (6 350 applicants per million inhabitants), Cyprus (4 370), Sweden (2 710), Greece (1 775), Austria (1 530) and Belgium (1 495).

In some Member States, a large proportion of the applicants came from a single country. The Member States with the highest concentrations were Poland (91% of the applicants came from Russia), Lithuania (77% from Russia), Hungary (52% from Serbia), Luxembourg (48% from Serbia) and Bulgaria (47% from Iraq).


Full Press release and data are available here.





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