In its annual report on the bloc’s asylum figures, the European Union Agency for Asylum (EUAA)—the body that supports member states in applying the EU laws governing asylum, international protection, and reception conditions—revealed nearly a million people registered for asylum status within the EU last year.
A total of 966,000 asylum applications were registered across the European Union’s 27 member states, Switzerland, and Norway in the year 2022, a figure not recorded since the height of the European migrant crisis of 2015 and 2016—an indication that, increasingly, the bloc lacks the ability to maintain the integrity of its external borders.
The number of asylum applications increased 50% year over year—and does not include the more than four million Ukrainian refugees who were, under a special mechanism, automatically granted temporary protection in the EU.
As has been recorded in years past, nationals from Syria applied for asylum more than any other nationality, with over 130,000 submitting applications, followed by 129,000 Afghan nationals, and Turkish nationals in third with 55,000 applications. Additionally, the figures showed arrivals from South America increased considerably, with 51,000 Venezuelan and 43,000 Colombian nationals having applied—three times as many applications submitted from these countries last year.
As The European Conservative reported at the end of 2022, the Western Balkan Route—which begins in Turkey, traverses through either Greece or Bulgaria, then passes through Serbia or Slovenia before reaching Central and Western Europe—once more was the most traveled migratory route into the EU, and became the most active since the 2015 crisis.
Last October, as flows of illegal immigration increased precipitously, the government of the Czech Republic reintroduced border checks with Slovakia, a fellow Schengen area member. The situation, which the Czech government described as “unprecedented,” saw arrivals of irregular immigrants increase by as much as 1,200% compared to last year.
Germany, the European Union’s most populous country, recorded the most asylum applications in the bloc. France, Spain, and Austria saw the second, third, and fourth-highest asylum applications, registering 154,597, 166,952, and 108,490 respectively.
However, Austria, with its population of just under nine million, registered the largest percentage increase of any EU member state, logging 108,490 asylum applications last year compared to 39,930 registered in 2021. The number, therefore, nearly tripled year over year.
In January, the European Commission, in response to the soaring asylum applications—and presumably in an attempt to signal to concerned citizens that the problem has not gone unnoticed by the executive—presented a plan which aims to accelerate the return of rejected asylum seekers to their country of origin.
“Those who do not have the right to reside in the European Union must be sent back to their country of origin,” EU Home Affairs Commissioner Ylva Johansson (S&D) told the press after unveiling the plan. She added that the number of successful repatriations “needs to be increased.”
The Commission’s new repatriation plan and the shift in the EU’s liberal establishment’s rhetorical tone on migration comes as support for national-conservative parties critical of mass migration has increased considerably over the past months and years—a trend that, for the moment, shows no sign of abating.
It remains unclear as to whether the establishment’s ostensible shift in its migration policy will prevent European voters from leaving behind old, entrenched political parties and flocking to right-wing, migration-critical parties.
