The European Union Agency for Asylum (EUAA), in its yearly flagship Asylum Report, published Tuesday, July 4th, has revealed that asylum applications filed in the 27-member bloc, with the addition of Norway, Switzerland, Iceland, and Lichtenstein, soared to nearly one million in 2022, a 53% year-over-year increase, and the highest recorded number since the 2016 migrant crisis.
Some individual EU member states—like Austria, France, Spain, and Portugal—recorded more asylum applications than at any time since figures began being collected across Europe in 2008.
The report, which uses data collected from various EU statistical agencies like Eurostat and others and brings together input from various civil society organizations and member states’ national authorities, shows that approximately 996,000 people applied for asylum within the Union’s borders.
Thus, together with the approximately four million Ukrainian refugees who aren’t required to go through the typical asylum channels, close to five million people sought some kind of protection status across Europe in 2022. At approximately five million, the figure shatters Europe’s record asylum numbers from 2015 (1.4 million) and 2016 (1.3 million).
The unprecedented influx of newcomers is exerting “acute pressure on already strained reception places in many countries,” the EUAA noted in its report.
As was the case in 2015 when men comprised nearly three-fourths (73%)—and young men between the ages of 18 and 24 made up 53%—of Europe’s asylum seekers, 71% of those who filed asylum applications in the EU+ countries last year were men. Most came from Syria (138,000), Afghanistan (132,000), Turkey (58,000), Venezuela (51,000), and Colombia (43,000).
Also similarly to past years, the vast majority (70%) of migrants seeking asylum lodged their application in Germany (25% or 244,000 applications), France (16% or 156,000 applications), Spain 12% or 118,000 applications), Austria (11% or 109,000 applications), and Italy (9% or 84,000 applications).
The report comes amid fierce debate within the bloc over the proposed Migration Pact, which, if adopted, would see member states forced to take in migrants as a part of an EU-wide distribution scheme or face fines of €22,000 per migrant. While frontline states like Italy, Greece, and Spain, understandably and for obvious reasons, are anxious to formalize the Pact, Central European states with right-wing, immigration-critical governments like Hungary and Poland have so far refused to accept the plan.
In June, national-conservative MEPs from ID and ECR groups came together to oppose the migration package which had been approved by the plenary weeks before.
