The report provides the following information: 

- Nearly 89.000 persons sought asylum in the EU-27 during the third quarter of 2012, which is nearly 12.000 more compared to the same quarter of 2011, and is also significantly higher than the second quarter of 2012.

- Belgium registered 7.110 asylum applicants during the third quarter of 2012  (8% of the total number of asylum applicants in the EU-27). Only Germany (20.375), France (14.765), Sweden (13.375) and UK (7.435) registered more asylum applicants than Belgium. In Sweden and Germany there were registered around 6.000 asylum applicants more in the third quarter of 2012 compared to the third quarter of previous year. The asylum applications in Italy (-53%)  on the contrary, fell drastically compared to the same period of last year. For Belgium there was a decrease with 14% compared to the same period last year.

-  Malta was in the third quarter the country with the highest number of asylum applications relative to the country population, followed by Sweden, Luxemburg and Belgium. When taking the country population into account Belgium still registered significantly more asylum applications compared to the EU-27-average, but the difference is decreasing compared to previous years.

- For the first time Syria was the most important country of origin (9% of the total), followed by Afghanistan (8%) and Russia (7%) during the 3rd quarter of 2012 in the EU. In absolute numbers the asylum applications from Syria, Serbia and Macedonia increased most compared to the third quarter of previous year. For Belgium the top 3 countries of origin during the third quarter was Afghanistan (11%), Russia (10%) and Guinea (8%).

- About 28% of the asylum applicants in the EU-27 were aged below 18 (accompanied and non-accompanied minors) during the third 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 page 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. This table demonstrates that about 70% of all asylum claims from Syria during the third 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 third quarter of 2012. Especially in 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 about 90% of all decisions were positive (mostly subsidiary protection status), while for Pakistan 87% were negative decisions and for Serbia almost all decisisons had a negative outcoume.

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