The report provides the following information: 

- Nearly 70 000 persons sought asylum in the EU-27 during the second quarter of 2012, which is 10 per cent less compared to the same quarter of 2011, but differs little from the number of asylum applicants in the EU-27 during the first quarter of 2012.

- Belgium registered 6 760 asylum applicants during the second quarter of 2012 (almost 10% of the total number of asylum applicants in the EU-27). Only France, Germany and Sweden registered more asylum applicants than Belgium. In Sweden and Germany there were registered around 2000 asylum applicants more in the second quarter of 2012 compared to the second quarter of 2011. The asylum applications in Italy, on the contrary, fell drastically compared to the same period of last year. For Belgium there was a slight decrease.

- Malta was in the second quarter the country with the highest number of asylum applications relative to the country population, followed by Luxemburg, Sweden and Belgium. When taking the country population into account Belgium registered more than 4 times more asylum applications compared to the EU-27-average.

- Afghanistan (9% of the total), Pakistan (6%) and Russia (6%) were the top 3 countries of origin for asylum seekers during the first quarter of 2012 in the EU-27. In absolute numbers the asylum applications from Syria, Albania, Georgia and Pakistan increased most compared to the second quarter of 2011. For Belgium the top 3 countries of origin during the second quarter are Afghanistan (14%), Russia (9%) and Guinea (8%).

- Almost one out of four asylum applicants in the EU-27 was aged below 18 (accompanied and non-accompanied minors) during the second quarter of 2012. As always, most asylum seekers were men, but the gender differentiation shows great differences depending on the country of origin (figure 8 on page7).

- 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. This table demonstrates that about 65% of all asylum claims from Syria during the second quarter were registered in Germany or Sweden. 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 member states reporting the highest number of first instance decisions issued during the second quarter of 2012. Especially in Germany the percentage of positive decisions was large. 

- 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 about 90% of all decisions were positive (mostly subsidiary protection status), while for Nigeria and Pakistan almost 90% had a negative outcome.
 

The full report with tables and figures 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.