Asylum Applications Increased by 3% in January 2023 Alone, Eurostat Reveals
According to Eurostat, the EU statistical office, the number of subsequent applicants for asylum was up by 13 per cent at the beginning of the year, totalling 6,715, AtoZSerwisPlus.pl reports.
The number of asylum applicants varied throughout the years, standing at nearly 60,000 in January 2019 before it hit a record low in April 2020, when merely 7,990 applicants were recorded. These rates are likely related to COVID-19 developments, as in 2020, almost all countries were under lockdown, reflecting the low number of applicants.
While the number of asylum applicants plunged in 2020, it skyrocketed in the last months of 2022, reaching all-time highs of 100,000 applications recorded.
Eurostat further reveals that Syrians remain the largest group of people seeking asylum, with 12,960 first-time applicants from this country recorded in January. This nationality group is followed by Afghans (11,055) and Turkish citizens (5,625).
“Following Russia’s military aggression against Ukraine, there was a large increase in Ukrainian first-time asylum applicants (from 2,105 in February 2022 to 12,190 in March 2022), but the numbers have been decreasing monthly (down to 1,030 in January 2023). This is also because people fleeing Ukraine benefit from temporary protection,” the authority points out.
Additionally, the number of applications filed by Russian citizens seeking international protection reached 2,560, ranking seventh among all citizenships in January.
Germany remains the top recipient country, receiving a total of 30,450 applicants, followed by France (13,520), Spain (10,855), Italy (8,415) and Austria (4,095). Moreover, 79 per cent of all applicants have filed for international protection in these five countries alone, whereas the
EU as a whole recorded 190 first-time asylum applicants per million people in the first month of the year.
Cyprus registered the highest rates of registered first-time applicants in terms of population – 779 applicants per million people, followed by Austria (456), while the lowest rates were recorded in Hungary (one).
The number of unaccompanied applicants seeking asylum in EU countries keeps rising, as Eurostat explains. In January 2023, 3,100 unaccompanied minors applied for asylum, marking a six per cent increase compared to December rates when 2,930 applicants were filed. Most unaccompanied minors who submitted asylum applications in January 2023 came from Afghanistan (1,195) and Syria (850).
The majority of applications filed by unaccompanied minors were recorded in Germany (1,465), Austria (300), Netherlands (260), Greece (245) and Belgium (215).
The EU Agency for Asylum (EUAA) previously reported that 81,000 applications for asylum were recorded in February 2023, with Syria and Afghanistan remaining the two countries that file the most applications for international protection.
