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The global corona pandemic did not stop with the influx of refugees into Europe. After asylum applications in Austria completely collapsed in the first half of the previous year, there was only an increase compared to 2019 since the middle of the year.
During the year, asylum applications increased by 10 percent. In 2019, 12,886 asylum applications were submitted in Austria, compared to 14,192 in the previous year (2015: 88,340). It is the first time since the great refugee crisis of 2015 that the number of applications has increased again.
The director of the Federal Office for Immigration and Asylum, Wolfgang Taucher, and the head of the Central Office for Combating the Crime of Smugglers in the Federal Office of Criminal Police, Gerald Tatzgern, presented the latest figures on the statistics of asylum and foreigners 2020 on Thursday and commented on the current situation in the fight against human trafficking.
Even if the numbers are consistently low, Austria has a different image than other EU member states. The increase in Austria is “completely against the EU trend,” says Taucher. Because in the Union, the numbers fell by 31 percent in 2020. Due to the “increased importance of the Serbian-Romania-Hungary refugee route”, Austria was increasingly affected and, in fact, an “external border state ”. Especially since Hungary only accepted a handful of asylum applications last year.
According to Taucher, Austria is currently not an “objective 1 country” for refugees. Many would be picked up when traveling to Germany or Northern Europe, so they then submit their requests here. The increase in unaccompanied minor refugees was particularly strong at a plus of 70 percent.
National ranking
There are no surprises for the nations with the highest number of applications. Citizens of Syria, Afghanistan, Morocco, Iraq, Somalia or the Russian Federation are in the foreground here.
