EU reports 400,000 asylum applications in first half of year

400,000 asylum applications in the first half of the year according to the EU agency Keystone-SDA

The number of new asylum-seekers within the European Union and Switzerland and Norway fell significantly in the first half of the year. By the end of June, the EU Asylum Agency had counted almost 400,000 new applications, the agency announced on Monday.

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Compared to the first half of 2024, this represents a decrease of 114,000 or 23%. The statistics include figures from all EU countries as well as Switzerland and Norway.

There were a total of 399,000 applications in the 29 countries. France (78,000), Spain (77,000), Germany (70,000) and Italy (64,000) were far and away in the lead. In contrast to previous years, Germany was no longer number one.

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The authority attributed the decline in particular to the fall of Syria’s ruler Bashar al-Assad in December. For the first time in a decade, most new asylum-seekers (25,000) no longer came from the Mediterranean country but from Venezuela (49,000) in South America. A total of 42,000 people from Afghanistan applied for asylum.

Translated from German by DeepL/ts

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