By Anna Peverieri, Leo Marchandon and Mara Vilcu
(Reuters) -First-time applications from people seeking asylum in European Union countries fell by 13% last year, the first such decline since 2020, data from the bloc’s statistics office Eurostat showed on Thursday.
Eurostat reported 912,000 first-time asylum requests from non-EU citizens across the bloc’s 27 member states, down from more than 1 million in 2023.
Syrians made up the largest share of applicants, like every year since 2013, accounting for 16% of the first-time requests last year. The next biggest groups came from Venezuela and Afghanistan, accounting for 8% each.
The data also showed “a fall in the number of detected irregular entries to the EU,” the Director of the Migration Policy Centre at the European University Institute, Andrew Geddes, told Reuters in an emailed statement.
EU border agency Frontex said that in 2024 the number of migrants entering the European Union by irregular routes dropped overall by 38%, reaching the lowest level since 2021.
The data suggests that EU efforts to regulate entry are working to some extent, he added.
However, the “hidden side” of the trend suggests increasing numbers of migrants are finding themselves in countries in North Africa and the Middle East, “where there are concerns about protection standards and human rights abuses”, Geddes added.
Applications from Venezuela overtook those from Afghanistan, reflecting the “immense difficulties” Afghans face in fleeing their country, Catherine Woollard, Director of the European Council on Refugees and Exiles, told Reuters in an email.
Eurostat said nearly 148,000 first-time applications came from Syria in 2024, down 19.2% from a year earlier.
She said application numbers from Syria could fall further in future if the transition there following the fall of President Bashar al-Assad creates stability in the country, although it is too early to see an effect in the 2024 figures.
More than three quarters of total applications for international protection in EU countries were received by Germany, Spain, Italy, France and Greece.
The uneven distribution across the EU, with 82% of first applications made in just five countries, still represents a challenge, with certain countries “continuing to do very little despite making lots of noise on the issue,” Woollard said.
(Reporting by Anna Peverieri, Leo Marchandon and Mara Vîlcu in Gdansk; editing by Milla Nissi, William Maclean)
