The number of initial applications increased again this year, after fewer asylum seekers came to the EU in 2020 due to the coronavirus pandemic. A particularly large number of people wanted to move to Germany – there was a disproportionately high number of applications.

The number of asylum applications in the EU has risen again – particularly in Germany. According to the Funke Medingroup report newspapers, citing data from the EU statistical agency Eurostat, in the first nine months of the year 355,955 applications for asylum were filed in the European Union, an increase of 15 compared to the same period. percentage increase. last year In Germany, the number of applications more than doubled from January to the end of September – a 33 percent increase to 100,240 cases.

According to the data, Germany accounted for 28.4 percent of all first-time asylum applications in the European Union in the first nine months. This is more than any other EU country. In the same period last year, the German share stood at 24.3 percent.

Other important destination countries for asylum seekers were France with 20 percent of applications (73,255), Spain with eleven percent (39,755) and Italy with eight percent (28,645). This means that nearly two-thirds of all asylum applications in the 27 EU countries pertain to the four most populous countries. Hungary brings back: According to EU data, officials in the small country with a right-wing populist government accepted only 30 initial asylum applications in the first three quarters.

Most asylum seekers come from Syria and Afghanistan

According to statistics, the largest group of asylum seekers in the European Union were migrants from Afghanistan and Syria. Together they made up a third of all applicants, followed by expatriates from Pakistan and Iraq.

In 2020, the number of asylum seekers across Europe declined significantly, mainly due to the coronavirus pandemic. The decline in Germany (minus 28 percent of initial applications) and in the European Union (minus 31 percent) was almost the same in the previous year. Before the 2019 pandemic, 612,000 migrants applied for asylum in the European Union.