The report provides the following information:

• About 104 000 persons sought asylum in the EU-28 during the second quarter of 2013, which is an increase of around 50 per cent compared to the second quarter of 2012, and also significant more in comparison with the first quarter of 2013 (85 000 in EU-27).
• The number of asylum seekers in Germany has doubled compared to the same quarter of last year. But also Hungary (especially applicants from Kosovo), Bulgaria (especially applicants from Syria) and Poland (especially applicants from Russia) have seen a huge increase in the number of asylum applications compared to the second quarter of 2012. Belgium registered 5,035 asylum applicants during the second quarter of 2013 (about 4,8 % of the total number of asylum applicants in the EU-28). For the first time since long, Belgium is no longer among the top 5 of most important countries of destination for asylum seekers in the EU.  Belgium was the country with the biggest decrease in absolute terms in Q2 2013 compared to Q2 2012 (figure 3, p.2).
• Sweden, Hungary and Malta are the countries with the highest number of asylum applicants per million inhabitants in the second quarter of 2013, followed by Austria and Belgium. (table 1, p.4).
• In absolute numbers there was a very high increase of asylum applicants from Russia and Kosovo in the EU in the second quarter of 2013. There were nearly 4 times more asylum seekers from Kosovo and Russia in the EU-27 in Q2 2013 compared to the year before. Russia became by far the most important country of origin for asylum seekers in the EU, followed by Syria, Kosovo, Afghanistan and Pakistan (table 4, 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.
• 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 second quarter of 2013. Especially in Italy (mostly humanitarian status) and Sweden (mostly subsidiary protection) 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 all decisions were positive (mostly subsidiary protection status), while for Pakistan more then 80% of the first instance 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.