The European Union Agency for Asylum (EUAA) recently released its bi-annual update on the data trends on asylum in the first half of 2024. These data should be of interest for stakeholders and experts for various reasons, including that they provide an infographic of the pending asylum applications tracked by every EU Member State. Data on asylum applications in the EUAA report include all persons who have lodged or have been included in an application for international protection as a family member.
In the first half of 2024, 512.989 applications for asylum were lodged in the EU+ Member States (EU 27 plus Switzerland and Norway), with a slight diminution from 2023, when, in the first six months, the applications were more than 520.000. Syrians remain the largest group of applicants with 71.000 applications, an increase of 7 % compared to the same period in 2023. The EUAA predicts that by the end of 2024 there will be more than 1 million asylum applications.
Afghans are the second largest group of applicants (45.000 applications), but there was a decrease of 18 % in the number of their applications. Asylum applicants from Mali and Senegal also proportionally increased substantially, due to the situation of crisis of the Atlantic migration route.
Germany is the largest State recipient of asylum applications, with more than 120.000 asylum applications lodged in the first half of 2024, followed by Spain (88.000) and Italy (85.000).
These data reflect the persistent difficulties that the EU Member States have in managing the flux of people coming from outside their borders, a situation that can be hardly defined as a crisis since it has been going on for more than 10 years. The EUAA data are extremely useful for understanding and contextualizing the situation, but readers should not forget that behind these data there is the personal situation of every asylum applicant.
More data about the trends in asylum applications for the first half of 2024 is available here and the long-term trends (from 2015) are also available here. It should also be remembered that the EUAA data refer to the 20 major nationalities of applicants for asylum and thus that a smaller amount of situations is not included in the analysis.
Image credits: EUAA
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