Number of EU refugees nearly halved in 2017

A total of 706,913 asylum applications were recorded among European Union member states, Norway and Switzerland in 2017, a 43-percent decrease from a year ago, data revealed on Thursday.

It was the second consecutive year with fewer applications after the unprecedented influx in 2015 and 2016, according to the European Asylum Support Office.

The 2017 total remained at a slightly higher level than the number of applications in 2014, indicating that the asylum-related inflow is still considerable.

Syria was the most common country of origin of applicants for the fifth consecutive year, with more than 98,000 applications. The other three main countries of origin are Iraq, Afghanistan and Nigeria.

About 55,000 applications, or 8 percent of the total, were repeated applications by persons who had already lodged an application previously in the same country.

In 2017, EU plus Norway and Switzerland issued 981,615 decisions at first instance, 13 percent fewer than in 2016.

As a whole, 40 percent of all decisions in first instance were positive. This recognition rate was 17 percentage points lower than in 2016.

At the end of 2017, there were 462,532 applications awaiting a decision in first instance. This is half the number of cases that were pending at the end of 2016 as a result of more first-instance decisions being issued in 2017 than asylum applications lodged.