Asylum applications tripled in Austria last year, making it the EU country with the sharpest increase in applications across the bloc, a European Commission report leaked by die Welt shows.
In the European Union, 923,991 people applied for asylum in 2022, meaning asylum applications almost doubled on average compared to the previous year. Most applicants are from Syria, followed by Afghanistan, Turkey, Venezuela, and Colombia.
Germany, France, Spain and Austria are the top destinations for asylum seekers, while Hungary, with just 46 requests, registered the least applications.
Austria, which has continuously warned of a surge in irregular migration, vetoed the Schengen accession of Romania and Bulgaria over concerns that the two countries would not be able to carry out sufficient border controls to bring legal migration to a halt.
On Monday, Austrian Chancellor Karl Nehammer will travel to the Bulgarian-Turkish border to take stock of the situation there. Ahead of his travel, Nehammer called on the European Commission to act and strengthen the European border.
He stressed his “full support for Bulgaria and Romania” and demanded, “concrete actions on the part of the European Commission to strengthen the external border management.”
“Bulgaria must be put in a position to establish a border guard as robust as that of Greece. The necessary funds from the EU budget must be made available for this,” Nehammer said in a statement on Saturday.
In addition to the asylum seekers, around five Million Ukrainians have applied for so-called “temporary protection”, allowing them to obtain an immediate residence permit and giving them the right to work in the EU.
(Oliver Noyan | EURACTIV.de)
Source: euractiv.com
