The head of the European Asylum Agency, Nina Gregory, said she expects a continued increase in asylum seekers in the EU.
Gregory said in statements to the newspapers of the German Fonke media group that were published on Monday: “It is quite clear that the increasing number of applications will continue in the foreseeable future”.
She added that instability and threats to human security are the features of today’s world, and she said, “Unfortunately, they aren’t temporary”.
Gregory added that geopolitical developments during the years 2021 and 2022 will result in direct impacts on the need for international protection and will lead to an increase in displacement to European Union countries.
She indicated that about 790,000 asylum applications were submitted in the European Union between January and October of this year, explaining that this number represents an increase of 54% compared to the same time period in 2021, but confirmed that the number It is still lower than the levels observed in 2015 and 2016, at the time of the peak refugee flows into Europe.
According to data from the European Asylum Agency, most asylum seekers come from Syria, Afghanistan and Türkiye.
It should be noted that the number of asylum seekers has recently increased in Germany as well.
It is noteworthy that asylum seekers from Ukraine don’t have to go through long asylum procedures within the European Union, as they have been granted temporary protection since the start of the Russian war in Ukraine.
Gregory said activating the temporary protection approach had prevented the collapse of national European asylum systems, but noted that millions of registrations had put European registration systems “under extreme pressure”.
The head of the European Asylum Agency called for progress in reforming the EU’s planned asylum and migration system, and applauded an EU-wide statement saying structural solutions were to be found before the European elections in 2024, “Progress on these issues will become important,” she said.
