Asylum Seekers in the EU

Eurostat, the statistical office of the European Union, has recently published details of asylum decisions in the EU28.

These figures show that the EU28 Member States granted protection to 135,700 asylum seekers in 2013, compared with 116,200 in 2012.

Over the last five years, more than 570,000 asylum seekers have apparently been granted protection status in the EU.

The three largest groups of beneficiaries of protection status in the EU28 in 2013 remained citizens of Syria (35,800 persons or 26% of the total number of persons granted protection status), Afghanistan (16,400 or 12%) and Somalia (9,700 or 7%).

Eurostat data also shows that the highest number of persons granted protection status in 2013 was registered in Sweden (26,400), followed by Germany (26,100), France (16,200), Italy (14,500) and the United Kingdom (13,400). All together, these five Member States accounted for more than 70% of all those granted protection status in the EU28.

In total, of the 135,700 people who were granted protection status in 2013, 64,500 were granted refugee status (47% of all positive decisions), 50,900 subsidiary protection (37%) and 20,400 authorisation to stay for humanitarian reasons (15%). In addition, the EU28 Member States received 4,800 resettled refugees.

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