Malta has a lower percentage of first time asylum seekers than other EU states

Malta had a total of 390 first time asylum seekers in the first quarter of this year and 385 in the second quarter.

This amounts to just 0.1% of all asylum seekers in Europe in the second quarter of this year. If Malta had a million inhabitants, these asylum seekers would amount to 882. This might seem a lot, but in reality there are other countries with far more asylum seekers proportionately.

Germany, for instance, would have 2,273 while Hungary would have 1,517, Greece 1,113. This explains the huge anti-immigrant waves that are creating political havoc in these countries.

Other countries get proportionately fewer asylum seekers than Malta – Luxembourg gets 715, (per million inhabitants), Italy gets 446, the UK gets 149 and Slovakia gets just 2.

During the second quarter of 2016 (from April to June), 305,700 first time asylum seekers applied for international protection in the Member States of the European Union, up by 6% compared with the first quarter of 2016 (when 287,100 first time applicants were registered).

With nearly 90,500 first time applicants between April and June 2016, Syrians remained the main citizenship of people seeking international protection in the EU Member States, ahead of Afghans (50,300 first time applicants) and Iraqis (34,300).

They represent the three main citizenships of first time asylum applicants in the EU Member States over the second quarter 2016, accounting for almost 60% of all first time applicants, Eurostat said yesterday.

During the second quarter, the highest number of first time applicants was registered in Germany (with almost 187,000 first time applicants, or 61% of total first time applicants in the EU Member States), followed by Italy (27,000, or 9%), France (17,800, or 6%), Hungary (14,900, or 5%) and Greece (12,000, or 4%).

Among those Member States with high numbers of asylum seekers, numbers of first time applicants in the second quarter 2016 more than doubled compared with the previous quarter in Greece (+132%) as well as in Hungary (+118%), and rose notably in Poland (+65%) and Spain (+37%).

In contrast, decreases were recorded in particular in the Nordic Member States – Denmark (-59%), Finland (-53%) and Sweden (-42%) – as well as in the Netherlands (-47%), Belgium (44%) and Austria (-22%).