site.bta Bulgaria Recorded 1.6% of EU's First Time Asylum Applicants in 2016

Bulgaria Recorded 1.6% of EU's First Time  Asylum Applicants in 2016

Brussels, March 16 (BTA correspondent Nikolay Jeliazkov) - With 18,990 first time
applicants registered in 2016, Bulgaria recorded 1.6 per cent of all first time applicants in the EU Member States, according to Eurostat data.

This is 6 per cent less than in 2015. Most applicants in Bulgaria in 2016 came from Afghanistan (8,645), Iraq (5,240) and Syria (2,585).

In 2016, 1.2 million first time asylum seekers applied for international protection in the EU Member States, about 53,000 fewer than in 2015. The EU registered a steady drop in the number of first time applicants from September 2016.

Six in 10 applied for asylum in Germany, followed by Italy with 10 per cent of all applications, France (6 per cent), Greece (4 per cent), and Austria and Britain (3 per cent each). The largest decreases were recorded in Sweden (-86 per cent), Finland (-84 per cent) and Denmark (-71 per cent). Slightly over a million asylum applications were pending at the end of 2016.