(24 March 2014) – In 2013, 435 000 asylum applicants were registered in the EU28. It is estimated that around 90% of these were new applicants and around 10% were repeat applicants. In 2012, there were 335 000 asylum applicants.
In 2013, the highest number of applicants was registered in Germany (127 000 applicants, or 29% of total applicants), followed by France (65 000, or 15%), Sweden (54 000, or 13%), the United Kingdom (30 000, or 7%) and Italy (28 000, or 6%). These five Member States accounted for 70% of all applicants registered in the EU28 in 2013.
Compared with the population of each Member State, the highest rates of applicants registered were recorded in Sweden (5 700 applicants per million inhabitants), Malta (5 300), Austria (2 100), Luxembourg (2 000), Hungary and Belgium (both 1 900).
Rates below 100 applicants per million inhabitants were observed in seven Member States: Portugal (50), the Czech Republic (65), Estonia (70), Romania (75), Slovakia (80), Latvia and Spain (both 95). In 2013, there were 860 asylum applicants per million inhabitants in the EU28.
Syria (50 000 asylum applicants, or 12% of the total number of applicants) became in 2013 the first main country of citizenship of these applicants, ahead of Russia (41 000, or 10%), Afghanistan (26 000, or 6%), Serbia (22 000, or 5%), Pakistan (21 000, or 5%) and Kosovo (20 000, or 5%).