Over a million migrants could reach Europe by year's end

Over a million migrants could reach Europe by year's end

In the first half of the year alone, 500,000 people applied for asylum in the European Union, Switzerland and Norway combined.

WORLD SEPTEMBER 6. 2023 13:39

The number of asylum applications in the EU-27 plus Norway and Switzerland rose to more than half a million in the first half of the year. The EU’s Malta-based asylum agency, the European Asylum Agency (EUAA), said 519,000 people applied for protection under the so-called EU+ system between the beginning of January and the end of June. This is 28 per cent more than in the same period last year.

If current trends continue, the agency expects more than one million applications for the whole of 2023. According to the EUAA, these are the highest half-year figures since 2015 and 2016, when the civil war in Syria led to around 1.3 million asylum applications in 2015 and around 1.2 million the following year across the 29 states. In 2022, the number of applications is just below one million, 994,945.

According to the report, the largest number of asylum applications in the first half of 2023 came from citizens of Syria, Afghanistan, Venezuela, Turkey and Colombia. They accounted for around 44 per cent of all applicants. The largest number of applications (around 30 per cent) was submitted in Germany. According to the Asylum Agency, many countries are under pressure to process the increased number of new applications. Turkish nationals, for example, have been granted protection less frequently over the past four years, with their share falling from 54 percent in 2019 to 28 per cent this year. As for Russians, on the other hand, the proportion of granted asylum applications has risen from 20 per cent in 2021 to 35 per cent now, and in case of Iranians, from 31 per cent in 2020 to 47 per cent now. Ukrainians are subject to a special procedure.

The Welt newspaper reported that the number of illegal entries into Germany has also increased significantly. According to the report, the federal police registered around 15,100 migrants entering the country illegally in August. This represents an increase of around 40 per cent compared to July, when the police recorded 10,714 illegal entries. In the first eight months of the year, there were already more than 71,000, compared to 91,986 last year.

The current figures are a stark reminder that 2015 is repeating itself, and the federal government is sitting idly by. Last week showed once again that this trend will not change as long as this government is in power. Along with the increase in the citizenship allowance, the total cash benefit for asylum seekers will also rise by 12 per cent from January 2024. The invitation to mass immigration into the welfare system could hardly be made more clear,

the opposition party Alternative for Germany (AfD) wrote in response to the report. According to the party, mass social migration could be stopped if there was political will for that.

WORLD