Asylum applications in the European Union

Asylum applications in the European Union – which counts an overall population of half a billion people – have grown steadily over the last five years: they were 261,000 in 2010; 310,000 in 2011, 336,000 in 2012, 432,000 in 2013 and 628,000 in 2014. In the first quarter of 2015, 186,000 applications for international protection have been presented in the EU. In the second quarter of the year, further 213,000 requests were presented, 85% more than those received by the EU in the same period of 2014. A fifth of the application come from Syrian (44,000) and Afghan nationals (27.000).

While in 2010 Germany received 49,000 applications, the number of requests grew significantly to 203,000 in 2014 (153,000 more requests were already registered in the first half of 2015). In Sweden the applications increased from 32,000 in 2010, to 81,000 in 2014 (and more than 26,000 in the first six months of 2015).

The number of requests in Italy went from 10,000 to 65,000 over the same period (30,000 in the first half 2015), France passed from 53,000 to 64,000 applications (29,000 in mid-year 2015); Hungary reached the fifth position in the ranking with a growth from 2,000 to 43,000 (65,000 in the first half of 2015), followed by the United Kingdom and Austria.