Eurostat, the statistical office of the European Union

F2: Population and migration

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Data series on asylum applications contain statistical information based on Article 4 of the Regulation (EC) No 862/2007 with reference to:

• Asylum, first time and subsequent applicants by age, sex, citizenship and status of minors.
• Persons subject of asylum applications pending at the end of reference period by age, sex, citizenship and status of minors.
• Asylum applications withdrawn by age, sex, citizenship, type of withdrawal and status of minors.
• Asylum applicants having had their applications processed under the accelerated procedure by age, sex, citizenship and status of minors.
• Applicants having benefited from material reception conditions at the end of the reference year.
• Asylum applicants considered to be unaccompanied minors by age, sex and citizenship.

Data are presented by country and aggregation for the European Union.

Data are rounded to the nearest 5.

The classification of codes on the reporting country (GEO) and on the country of citizenship of asylum applicants (CITIZEN) corresponds to the ISO 3166 code-list (3166-1 alpha-2) with the exception of:

• Greece where the code "EL" was adopted (instead of "GR") and
• United Kingdom where the code "UK" was adopted (instead of "GB"). 

Asylum migration - international protection statistics.

Statistical concepts and definitions for data on asylum applications are based on definitions in Article 2 of Regulation (EC) No 862/2007, Article 2 of Directive 2011/95/EU and Directive 2013/32/EU.

Application for international protection means request made by a third-country national or a stateless person for protection from a Member State, who can be understood to seek refugee status or subsidiary protection status, and who does not explicitly request another kind of protection, outside the scope of Directive 2011/95/EU, that can be applied for separately. 

All data explicitly refer to the number of persons. The data on asylum applications withdrawn are related to the number of persons rather than cases.

Statistical population for data on asylum applications are third-country nationals, i.e. any person who is not a citizen of the European Union within the meaning of Article 17(1) of the Treaty, including stateless persons.

EU Member States, Iceland, Liechtenstein, Norway, Switzerland, Montenegro.

Croatia from January 2012.

Montenegro from January 2018.

United Kingdom by November 2020.

According Regulation (EC) No 862/2007, statistics on asylum applications have been collected since January 2008 (Statistics | Eurostat (europa.eu))

However, some statistics collected previously on voluntary basis are also available for the period 1985-2007 (Statistics | Eurostat (europa.eu)).

Not applicable.

Number of persons.

Calendar month and calendar year.

Compilation of statistics on asylum applications is based on Article 4 of Regulation (EC) No 862/2007 and amending Regulation (EU) 2020/852, which depicts in detail the data provisions Member States are bound to supply Eurostat with.

Not applicable.

Regulation (EC) No 223/2009 on European statistics (recital 24 and Article 20(4)), stipulates the need to establish common principles and guidelines ensuring the confidentiality of data used for the production of European statistics and the access to those confidential data with due account for technical developments and the requirements of users in a democratic society.

Data on asylum applications are not confidential.

Statistical information is published in accordance with an approved release calendar.

Release calendar - Eurostat (europa.eu)

https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/web/main/news/release-calendar

In line with the Community legal framework and the European Statistics Code of Practice Eurostat disseminates European statistics on Eurostat's website respecting professional independence and in an objective, professional and transparent manner in which all users are treated equitably. The detailed arrangements are governed by the Eurostat protocol on impartial access to Eurostat data for users.

Data is disseminated continuously.

Data on asylum applicants are used in regular news articles.

https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/web/migration-asylum/asylum/publications

Data on asylum applicants are used in regular publications (News articles, Statistics Explained articles and other publications). 

https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/web/migration-asylum/asylum/publications

Eurostat produces Statistics Explained articles:

Asylum statistics introduced

Asylum applications - monthly statistics

Asylum applications - annual statistics

Asylum decisions - annual statistics

Data are online on the Eurostat website in the folder Applications (migr_asyapp).

https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/web/migration-asylum/asylum/database

Not applicable.

Data are rounded to the nearest 5. 

Due to the rounding, the sum of individual cells may not necessarily match the given total.

Asylum - Eurostat guidelines to Asylum templates - 2021 onwards is a Technical Guidelines for the data collection under art. 4.1-4.3 of amended Regulation (EC) No 862/2007 - Statistics on Asylum, Version 5.0 amended in December 2020, 2021 reference periods onwards. 

Eurostat’s quality policy

European Statistics Code of Practice

European Statistical System Quality Assurance Framework

European Statistical System Handbook on Quality and Metadata Reports

Asylum statistics are based on administrative sources. Certain differences in definitions and practices of producing asylum statistics exist between countries. However, the Member States are generally following the requirements of the Regulation (EC) No 862/2007 and the quality of the data may be assessed as good or very good.

• various policy DGs in the European Commission, like DG Migration and Home Affairs for designing, funding and implementing asylum related policies in the EU,
• European Parliament,
• national authorities (Ministries of Interior, Ministries of Justice, immigration agencies) who use Asylum data to monitor or project the development of their national asylum procedures,
• European Migration Network (EMN) which uses the Asylum data as a basis for its annual EU and national level statistical and analytical reports,
• researchers and students conducting analysis and research in the field of asylum,
• journalists and international organisations in the area of asylum and migration.

Eurostat does not conduct user satisfaction surveys per se. Instead, the user satisfaction is monitored on a constant way through informal and formal contacts and communications with users and through requests and comments received by users.

Completeness of data on asylum applicants depends largely on the availability of data from the relevant data providers (Ministries of the Interior, related immigration agencies and National Statistical Institutes).

The following table describes the completeness of data from 2021. 

The accuracy of statistical outputs in the general statistical sense is the degree of closeness of estimates to the true values.

The overall assessment of the accuracy of the data collection is considered to be high.

The asylum data are collected mainly through national administrative sources (registers in Ministries of the Interior, related immigration agencies and National Statistical Institutes).

Main sources of errors are:

• differences in definitions by not recording a certain information, which may thus lead to over or under coverage of the target population, or
• errors in the administrative register system (less often, mainly of technical nature).

EU aggregate is calculated as the sum of data from all Member States. It may be overestimated because of a certain risk that the same third-country national could apply for asylum in other Member States during the same reference period. While such risk is limited for high frequency monthly data, annual aggregates at the EU level (based on monthly statistics) can be possibly more affected by such double counting.

The following table describes the accuracy of data from 2021.

Not applicable.

Not applicable.

Depending on the data periodicity, the data is provided to Eurostat by the reporting countries:

• Monthly data: not later than 2 months after the end of the reference period.
• Annual data: not later than 3 months after the end of the reference period.
• Annual data on applicants having benefited from material reception conditions: not later than 6 months after the end of the reference period.

Generally, data are released by Eurostat on the public online database approximately 3 working days immediately after their reception (given that they do not contain any errors). In exceptional cases (large revisions, further validation, technical reasons, etc.) data may be disseminated later than 3 working days.

The punctuality of the data is overall good.

Majority of countries are able to meet the requirements of transmitting the data within the deadlines foreseen in the Regulation (EC) No 862/2007.

However, it is often the case that few countries might transmit the data some days/weeks after the deadline. The number of countries, which provide delayed data, can vary from period to period depending on problems that may arise in the respective national administrative systems.

The geographical comparability across countries may be affected by the fact that in some cases an applicant may submit a request in more than one country during the same reference period.

The comparability over time is affected by updates of requested statistics.

1. Period January 1985 – December 2007: data collected on the voluntary basis.
2. Period January 2008 – December 2014: data by Regulation (EC) No 862/2007.
3. Period January 2014 – December 2020: data by Regulation (EC) No 862/2007, implementation of the new 2013 Asylum Guidelines.
4. Period from January 2021: data by Regulation (EC) No 862/2007, implementation of the new 2021 Asylum Guidelines.

Not applicable.

Internal consistency (between time, age, sex, country, citizenship) is ensured through various validation checks performed both by national data providers but also by Eurostat before data publication.

The types of statistics required under the Regulation (EC) No 862/2007 are needed also for national purposes, such as for the management of the national system for processing asylum applications. In almost all cases, the data is based on existing administrative and statistical systems. The specific burdens placed by the Regulation on national authorities are therefore related to the need to prepare particular disaggregation or tables that might not otherwise have been produced, and to the need to apply the harmonised statistical definitions and concepts. For some national authorities, this resulted in one-off costs associated with the necessary adaptations to methods, procedures and systems.

The extent of the additional burdens varied between Member States according to the degree of similarity between the existing national systems for migration statistics and the requirements of the Regulation. However, in most Member States and for most of the statistics covered by the Regulation, the additional costs and burden are believed to be relatively limited and to be proportionate to the benefits obtained at both EU and national level of having more complete and better harmonised migration statistics.

To further specify the general Eurostat revision policy, in the area of Asylum statistics a revision policy has been consulted with the Asylum and Managed Migration Working Group in March 2014. This policy is presented in the Annex 4 of the technical guidelines Asylum - Eurostat guidelines to Asylum templates - 2021 onwards.

According to this and following the Eurostat’s revision policy, revisions of asylum statistics are classified in three main types: routine, unscheduled error, and major revisions. As a general rule, the routine revisions shall be delivered with an annual frequency, error revisions can be delivered any time, while major revisions are to be sent with prior notification to Eurostat and are subject of Eurostat's approval.

For more information, please see also in the Eurostat dedicated section on Asylum.

The revision practice generally corresponds to the revision practice of the domain listed under sub‑concept 17.1 (data revision – policy) but can be subject to exceptions.

Reported errors are corrected in the disseminated data as soon as the correct data have been validated.

Whenever new data are provided and validated, the already disseminated data are updated.

Data are usually revised for the last year, four quarters or twelve months. Aggregates and components are revised at the same time. Annual aggregated data are recomputed from monthly or quarterly data.
For the routine revisions the monthly datasets shall be revised once a year(s) covering the period of the previous calendar year and shall be delivered during the period from beginning of January to the end of February of the following year. For the quarterly datasets the routine revisions shall be sent once a year covering the period of the previous calendar year(s); to be delivered during the period from beginning of January to the end of April of the following year. For the annual datasets the routine revisions shall be sent once a year covering the period of the previous calendar year(s) and shall be delivered during the period from beginning of May to the end of September of the following year.

However, in case of specific circumstances (e.g. high inflow of the asylum seekers in a given period, urgent policy or reporting needs), such routine revisions may de facto be accepted more frequently in order to ensure the highest accuracy of the published statistics. In this case these revisions will be published shortly after reception and validation by Eurostat.
Routine revisions are documented and monitored internally, while major revisions including exceptional revisions are communicated in the Metadata files available in dissemination.

Data may be published despite incomplete datasets, with some data missing or flagged as provisional for specific statistics. Such data are replaced with the final versions upon transmission and validation.

The impact of major revisions is analysed in working documents produced for experts meetings held with representatives of the national data providers.

Data are compiled from the administrative records of the national authorities, mainly the Ministries of the Interior, related immigration agencies and National Statistical Institutes.

Data on asylum applicants are collected on monthly or annual basis.

This data collection is administered by Eurostat. The statistics are collected by the responsible data providers (Ministries of the Interior, related immigration agencies and National Statistical Institutes) and are supplied to Eurostat.

Eurostat performs a set of standardized validation checks before publishing the data. 

The transmission and the delivery of the datasets to Eurostat is managed by EDAMIS, the unique entry point. Statistical data must meet the Statistical Data and Metadata eXchange (SDMX) standard with the CSV data transmission format. 

The validation service infrastructure is built on two components performing validation operations, first structural validation (STRUVAL) checking the structure and organisation of a dataset, and then content validation (CONVAL) checking the content of the statistical files based on a set predefined validation rule. The data provider always receives two validation reports from each data transmission.

Validation rules to ensure internal data consistency:

• variable codes and values of data are from a predefined set of accepted code-lists and format;
• statistics are confronted against other relevant data (e.g. a 'total' value of a given disaggregation (dimension) should equal the sum of the disaggregated data);
• investigating inconsistencies in the statistics;
• analysis of size and sign of revision;
• verifying the statistics against expectations and domain intelligence;
• outlier detection.

Automatically validated data in Edamis are forwarded to Eurostat's production system, where they are further validated by data managers using other validation tools and then published on the Eurobase website.

Based on the national detailed figures transmitted by the national data providers, Eurostat derives European aggregates and annual aggregations using a common calculation method.

The geographical aggregation is calculated by an arithmetic sum if there are no missing values between the components of the respective geographical aggregate. Otherwise, they are not calculated.

The annual aggregation is calculated by an arithmetical sum if there are no monthly values missing between the components of the respective annual total. Otherwise, they are not calculated.

Data are rounded to the nearest 5. 

Due to the rounding, the sum of individual cells may not necessarily match the given total.

Metadata is continuously updated.