Renewed asylum statistics

A single asylum case or asylum decision can refer to several persons. In many cases, children flee their country with their parents, but until recently these children were not visible in the Belgian asylum statistics. As of January 2016 the monthly statistics published by the Office of the Commissioner for Refugees and Stateless persons (CGRS) refer to the number of persons and no longer to the number of asylum cases.

The protection rate corresponds to the number of persons who were granted refugee status or subsidiary protection by the CGRS, compared to the total number of persons who received a final (first-instance) decision, including decisions refusing to take into account a subsequent asylum application. This also conforms to European standards. For the first time, the CGRS will also release statistics on the gender and age of asylum applicants. The asylum statistics contain data from the Immigration Office (where asylum applications are registered) and from the database of the CGRS (which assesses and decides on asylum applications).

Asylum statistics January 2016

In January 2016, the Immigration Office registered 2,842 persons as asylum applicants in Belgium. This is about half the monthly average of persons (5,885) who filed an asylum application during the peak period between August and December 2015. The number of asylum applicants registered in January 2016 is still higher than a year ago (1,717 persons in January 2015).

The past few weeks, the number of asylum applications has decreased not only in Belgium. The same tendency is noticed in other European countries. Especially in the Scandinavian countries, the decrease is striking. In other EU Member States such as Germany, the number of asylum applicants remains high. It is too early to draw conclusions from this evolution. In view of the international situation, it is possible that the number of asylum applicants will go up again. 2015 was characterized by the highest number of asylum applicants in Belgium (35,476 cases or 44,760 persons) since the year 2000 (41,982 cases).

More information on the profile of the asylum applicants, the protection rate and the backlog of the CGRS can be found on the website of the CGRS via this link.