Informing humanitarians worldwide 24/7 — a service provided by UN OCHA

Germany + 6 more

Asylum Statistics 2016: Sharper Inequalities and Persisting Asylum Lottery

On January 17 the ECRE’s Asylum Information Database (AIDA) published an overview of the latest asylum trends revealing sharper discrepancies in the distribution of refugees across Europe, as well as persisting disparities in the recognition of international protection.

“We do not yet have data from all European countries but based on available information it is clear that there is an increasing lack of fair distribution of asylum seekers and significant differences in the recognition rates across Europe,” says Minos Mouzourakis, AIDA Coordinator.

Although statistics for Germany 2016 includes a backlog of cases from 2015 the number of applications is substantial compared to other European countries – a few examples below:

Germany: 745,545 Italy: 123,482, France: 85,244, Sweden: 28,939, Belgium: 18,710

At the same time recognition rates continue to vary significantly from one EU Member State to another. Sweden reported an overall protection rate of 77.4%, whereas neighbouring Finland had a rate of 35.2% and Italy a rate of 38.7%.

Recognition rates have also varied for the same nationalities – a few examples for Iraqis below:

Germany: 70.2% Belgium: 54.4%, Sweden 45%, Finland 24.1%, Norway: 18.4%