EU Agency: More than 500,000 asylum applications in the first half of 2024

ROME: The number of asylum seekers in the European Union (EU), Norway and Switzerland decreased slightly in the first half of the year but still exceeded half a million, the German News Agency (dpa) reported, based on official figures on Monday.

From January to the end of June, the Malta-based European Union Agency for Asylum (EUAA) recorded a total of 513,000 new applications – a slight decrease of 6,000 compared to the first half of 2023.

The statistics include figures from all EU countries as well as Norway and Switzerland, which are not part of the union.

The most applications among the 29 countries were again registered in Germany: 124,000, or almost a quarter of the total.

Across the region, the agency expects more than one million applications by the end of the year.

Some 71,000 asylum seekers came from war-torn Syria, a seven percent increase on the previous year. It was followed by 45,000 Afghan nationals who applied for asylum, marking a decrease of 18 percent.

From Venezuela, 37,000 people applied for asylum, almost all in Spain.

About 4.5 million people from Ukraine who have sought refuge in the EU and received temporary protection since the Russian invasion in February 2022, are not included in these figures.

In an EU-wide comparison, Spain ranked second in terms of absolute numbers in the first half of the year with 88,000 applications, almost the same as last year. Italy was third with 85,000 applications, up by about a third.

In terms of per capita, the small country of Cyprus recorded the most applications with 4,900.

Figures from the United Kingdom, which is no longer part of the EU, are not included in these statistics.