About 4 million Ukrainian refugees received temporary asylum in the EU countries. Along with them, in 2022, EU countries received about 966 thousand applications from refugees from other countries, which is more than 50% more than in 2021. This is the highest figure since 2016, according to an analytical report by the European Union Agency for Refugees, published on February 22.
“The largest groups of applicants were Syrians, Afghans and Turks, but the number of applications was also high for a wide range of citizens of other nationalities, while the number of applications pending reached its highest level since 2017,” the statement said. release.
Analysts say the surge in refugee requests is partly driven by the lifting of COVID-19-related restrictions and long-term underlying trends such as international conflict and food insecurity in many regions.
This leads to spontaneous waves of refugees. In addition, secondary movements within the EU and a significant number of applications from citizens of visa-free countries who arrived legally also contributed to the sharp increase in the number of asylum requests in the EU.
“Syrians (132,000) and Afghans (129,000) remained by far the largest groups of applicants, and citizens of both countries filed significantly more applications than in 2021 <...> The number of applicants from Turkey (55 thousand) more than doubled and became the third largest group of applicants. They were followed by Venezuelans (51,000) and Colombians (43,000), who filed about three times as many applications as in 2021. Turks, Venezuelans, Colombians, Bangladeshis (34,000) and Georgians (29,000) have filed the most applications on record. At lower levels, record applications were also filed by citizens of India (26 thousand), Morocco (22 thousand), Tunisia (21 thousand), Egypt (15 thousand), Moldova (8.3 thousand) and a number of other countries. , – experts cite statistics.
Agency experts pointed to the growing pressure on the EU countries due to refugees, which are becoming increasingly difficult for both special services and citizens of European countries to cope with. In 2022, the EU asylum authorities issued around 632,000 first instance decisions, a fifth more than in 2021. At the end of the year, about 636,000 cases were pending at first instance, up 44% compared to 2021.
On February 21, Transnistrian Foreign Minister Vitaly Ignatiev told Izvestiya that since the end of February last year, more than 65,000 Ukrainian refugees have passed through the territory of the republic. At the same time, more than 20 thousand of them remained to live in the Pridnestrovian Moldavian Republic.
On February 15, the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees reported that since February last year, 8,071,673 people from Ukraine arrived in Europe.
According to the UN Office, Russia received the most Ukrainians – 2,852,395. The second on the list is Poland (1,563,386), followed by Germany (1,055,323), the Czech Republic (489,865), Italy (169,837), Spain (166,832). ), United Kingdom (161,400), Bulgaria (152,515), France (118,994), Romania (113,086), Moldova (108,885) and Slovakia (107,199). In other countries, the number of entrants does not exceed 100,000.
