site.btaBulgaria Grants Protection to 5,575 Asylum Seekers in 2015

Bulgaria Grants Protection to 5,575 Asylum Seekers in 2015

Brussels, April 20 (BTA correspondent Nikolay Jeliazkov) - In 2015, Bulgaria granted protection to 5,575 asylum seekers, of whom 5,320 were Syrians, according to Eurostat data. The remaining were 160 Afghans and 95 stateless people.

Bulgaria granted 5,605 positive decisions. Some 4,705 protection seekers received refugee status and 895 subsidiary protection. In 91 per cent of the cases the decision was positive. For decisions on appeal was the recognition rate was 50 per cent.

In 2015, the EU granted protection status to 333, 350 asylum seekers in 2015, an increase of 72 per cent compared with 2014. Since 2008, a total of nearly 1.1 million asylum seekers have been granted protection status in the EU. The largest group of beneficiaries of protection status in the EU in 2015 remained citizens of Syria (166,100 persons, or 50 per cent of the total number of persons granted protection status in the EU Member States), followed by citizens of Eritrea (27, 600 or 8 per cent) and those of Iraq (23, 700 or 7 per cent).

Almost half of positive decisions were granted in Germany (148,200, or 212 per cent up compared with 2014, followed by Sweden (34, 500, or up 4 per cent), Italy (29, 600, or up 44 per cent), France (26,000, or up 26 per cent), the United Kingdom (17,900, or up 26 per cent), Austria (17 800, or up 77 per cent) and the Netherlands (17, 000, or up 29 per cent).