The report provides the following information:

• About 85,000 persons sought asylum in the EU-27 during the first quarter of 2013, which is  15,000 more compared to the same quarter of 2012, but significantly less than the fourth quarter of 2012.
• Belgium registered 5,880 asylum applicants during the first quarter of 2013 (7% of the total number of asylum applicants in the EU-27). Only Germany (21,065), France (15,970), Sweden (9,720) and UK (7,155) registered more asylum applicants than Belgium. Germany and Sweden recorded the highest increases of asylum applicants in absolute terms, whereas Hungary and Bulgaria recorded by far the highest increases of asylum applicants in relative terms (nearly 4 times more), in Q1 2013 compared to Q1 2012. Belgium was to country with the biggest decrease in absolute terms in Q1 2013 compared to Q1 2012 (figure 3, p.2).
• Sweden was by far the country with the highest number of asylum applicants per million inhabitants in the first quarter of 2013, followed by Belgium, Austria and Cyprus. When taking the country population into account Belgium still registered significantly more asylum applications compared to the EU-27-average (about 3 times more), but the difference is decreasing compared to previous years (table 1, p.4).
• In absolute numbers there was a high increase of asylum applicants from Syria (+6000) and Russia (+4000) in the EU-27 in Q1 2013. As a consequence Russians and Syrians were the main countries of citizenship of asylum seekers in the EU-27 in Q1 2013, representing nearly 20 per cent of all asylum seekers.  In relative terms, the increase of asylum seekers from Mali was the highest (4 times more, figure 6, p.3). For Belgium the top 3 countries of origin during the first quarter of 2013 was Guinea (9%), Afghanistan (9%) and Russia (9%).
• About 25% of the asylum applicants in the EU-27 were aged below 18 (accompanied and non-accompanied minors) during the first quarter of 2013. As always, most asylum seekers were men, but the gender differentiation shows great differences depending on the country of origin (figure 8, p.7).
• Table 6 on page 9 indicates which are the most popular countries of destination in the EU-27 for the thirty main citizenships of asylum seekers in the EU-27.  The asylum influx from a specific country of origin is almost always concentrated towards two or three countries in the EU-27. For many countries of origin Belgium is amongst the five most popular countries of destination.
• Figure 9 on page 11 compares the first instance decisions by outcome for the six member states (Germany, France, Sweden, Italy, UK and Belgium) reporting the highest number of first instance decisions issued during the first quarter of 2013. Especially in Italy and Sweden the percentage of positive decisions was high.
• As illustrated by figure 10 and table 11, the outcome of the first instance decisions in the EU-27 shows large differences depending on the country of origin. For Syria allmost 90% of all decisions were positive (mostly subsidiary protection status), while for Serbia almost all decisions had a negative outcome.

The full report with tables and figures can be found above and can also be found on the Eurostat website.

The report is only available in English.

Please note :
The Eurostat data refer to persons and not to files and all data are provisional. The data are rounded up to the nearest 5. The data are supplied by Member States according to the provisions of Article 4 of the Regulation (EC) 862/2007