More than 1 million asylum applications in Europe in 2023

The number of asylum applications in the European Union will "clearly" exceed 1 million this year, the head of the European asylum agency EUAA told the German media group Funke on Tuesday. In October, the highest number of monthly asylum applications in seven years was registered.

By the end of October, there had been 937,000 applications across the year, an increase of 22 per cent compared to the same period last year. In October, 123,000 asylum applications were registered.

According to Nina Gregori, the number of applications in 2023 will therefore be "clearly above a million" and she does not expect the number to immediately drop in the coming years. "The world around us is becoming more unstable," she said.

In Belgium, 32,203 applied for asylum from January 1 to the end of November, according to figures from the Commissioner General for Refugees and Stateless Persons.

^{© BELGA PHOTO LOU LAMPAERT}