Berlin – The Federal Republic remains the number one refuge in Europe.

In Germany, the number of asylum applications has almost doubled in recent days compared to the European Union.

By the end of September, there had been 100,240 initial asylum applications. An increase of 33 percent over the same period last year.

For comparison: in the first nine months of this year, a total of 355 955 asylum applications were registered in the EU for the first time, newspapers from the Funke media group reported, citing new data from the EU statistics agency Eurostat – that increase of 15 percent.

Of all first-time asylum applications in the EU, 28.4 percent come from Germany – the first place. In the same period last year, the German share stood at 24.3 percent.

France is second with 20 percent (73,255) of all applications, followed by Spain with eleven percent (39,755) and Italy (eight percent, 28,645 applications). Unpopular as a refuge: Hungary. According to Eurostat, only 30 asylum applications were made there during the same period. None of the EU countries had less.

A third of asylum seekers come from Afghanistan and Syria. The next largest group of migrants come from Pakistan and Iraq.

Last year there was a significant drop in asylum applications due to the coronavirus pandemic.