You can read the News Release in English, French and German through the following link:

The News Release is accompanied by the Statistics Explained article Asylum quarterly report, analysing quarterly trends on First time asylum applicants and first instance decisions on asylum applications for the second quarter of 2015.

Some key messages in the data, from both reports:

• Over 210 000 first time asylum seekers in the EU in the second quarter of 2015; up by 15% compared with the first quarter of 2015 and by 85% compared with the second quarter of 2014
• One third of first time applicants are from Syria or Afghanistan in Q2 2015
• Of the 44 000 Syrians, more than three quarters were registered in four Member States: Germany (16 300 applicants), Hungary (8 400), Austria (5 300) and Sweden (3 900)
• Half of the 27 000 Afghanis seeking asylum protection for the first time in the EU applied in Hungary, and nearly 90% of the 17 700 Albanians applied in Germany
• Highest number of first time applicants relative to the population in Hungary
• Almost 600 000 persons subject of asylum applications pending at the end of June 2015
• 117 800 first instance decisions were taken in the EU during the second quarter of 2015, 46% of them were positive
• Syrians were the main recipients of protection statuses in the EU, followed by Eritreans, Iraqis and Afghanis.