EU statistics for those interested
"Where do they come from?
Citizens of 149 countries sought asylum for the first time in the EU in the third quarter of 2015. Syrians, Afghanis and Iraqis were the top 3 citizenships of asylum seekers, lodging around 138 000, 56 700 and 44 400 applications respectively (Table 1).
Syrians (98 000 more applicants compared to the third quarter of 2014) added most to the overall increase in first time asylum applicants in absolute terms, followed by Afghanis (46 700 more) and Iraqis (40 400 more) (Figure 2, Table 1).
Asylum applicants from Iraq (11 times more) recorded the most substantial relative increase in the EU in the third quarter of 2015 compared to the same quarter of 2014 followed by Albanians (nearly 8 times more), Afghanis (almost 6 times more), Pakistanis (4 times more) and Syrians (3 times more) (Figure 3, Table 1).
Of the 138 000 Syrians who applied for the first time for asylum in the EU in the third quarter of 2015, more than three quarters were registered in three Member States: Germany (53 100), Hungary (35 800) and Sweden (18 100). Of the 56 700 Afghanis seeking asylum protection for the first time in the EU during the third quarter of 2015, half (27 600) applied in Hungary, while 85% of the 26 500 Albanians applied in Germany (22 400). Syrians were the main citizenship of asylum seekers in 11 EU Member States (Table 4, Table 5).
Main destination countries
The highest number of first time asylum applicants in the third quarter of 2015 was registered in Germany and Hungary (both with slightly over 108 000 applicants, or 26% each of total applicants in the EU Member States), followed by Sweden (42 500, or 10%), Italy (28 400, or 7%) and Austria (27 600, or 7%). These 5 Member States together account for more than 75% of all first time applicants in the EU-28 (Table 2).
Trends in number of asylum applicants vary from country to country in the third quarter of 2015. Hungary with nearly 100 000 more first time asylum applicants saw its number of asylum seekers jumping notably by 13 times compared to the same quarter of 2014, while Finland recorded 15 times more asylum seekers (or 15 100 more).
Germany (58 400 applicants more) continued to record increasing numbers of asylum applicants, while Austria (20 300 more applicants, or 4 times more) was the country with the third largest absolute and relative increase in the number of asylum seekers in the EU in the third quarter of 2015 (Figures 4 and 5).
Decisions on asylum applications
135 200 first instance decisions[3]) were made by the national authorities of EU Member States during the third quarter of 2015. Among them, almost half were positive (i.e. granting a type of protection status) (Table 6).
Germany, France, Italy and Sweden issued the most total first instance decisions[4] during the third quarter of 2015 (54 300, 19 700, 19 600 and 11 400 respectively) (Figure 7. Table 6).
Most decisions were issued to Syrians (33 100) and Albanians (17 300), followed by Eritreans (6 700), Iraqis (5 800), and Kosovans (5 200) (Table 7).
Syrians have received by far the highest number of protection statuses in the EU Member States, including protection based on national legislations (32 400 positive first instance decisions, or 98% rate of recognition[5]), followed by Eritreans (5 900, or 87%), Iraqis (5 100, or 88%) and Afghanis (2 700, or 70%).
Of the 17 300 first instance decisions issued to Albanians only 200 were positive (or 1% rate of recognition), while of the 5 200 issued to Kosovans only 200 were positive (or 4% respectively) (Figure 6, Table 7)."
ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php/Asylum_quarterly_report