EU: Over 72 000 asylum seekers in April 2023

Brussels: In April 2023, 72 630 first-time asylum applicants (non-EU citizens) applied for international protection in EU countries.

Compared with April 2022 (54 350), this represents a 34 % increase. There were also 5 310 subsequent applicants, a 5 % decrease compared with April 2022 (5 610).

This information comes from the monthly asylum data published by Eurostat today. The article presents a handful of findings from the more detailed Statistics Explained article on monthly asylum statistics.

As in the previous months, in April 2023, Syrians were the largest group of people seeking asylum (9 420 first-time applicants). They were followed by Afghans (7 405), ahead of Venezuelans (5 785), Colombians (4 770) and Turks (4 640).

Following Russia’s military aggression against Ukraine, there was a significant increase in Ukrainian first-time asylum applicants (from 2 105 in February 2022 to 12 190 in March 2022), but the numbers have been decreasing monthly down to 895 in April 2023. This is also because people fleeing Ukraine benefit from temporary protection.

In April 2023, the number of first-time asylum applicants with Russian citizenship ranked 12th among all citizenships, with 1 720 applications.

In April 2023, Germany (20 950), Spain (12 910), France (10 260) and Italy (8 175) received the highest number of first-time asylum applicants, accounting for almost three-quarters (72 %) of all first-time applicants in the EU.

In total in the EU, there were 162 first-time asylum applicants per million people in April 2023.

Compared with the population of each EU country (on 1 January 2023), nine Member States had a higher rate than the overall EU ratio. The lowest rate was observed in Hungary (0.4).

In April 2023, 2 625 unaccompanied minors applied for asylum for the first time in the EU, mostly from Afghanistan (895) and Syria (685).

The EU countries which received the highest number of asylum applications from unaccompanied minors in April 2023 were Germany (1 105), ahead of the Netherlands (340) and Austria (285).