Bulgaria granted asylum to 760 people in 2018, most Syrians
Bulgaria granted asylum to 760 people in 2018, European Union statistics agency Eurostat said on April 25.
Of the people to whom Bulgaria granted protection, the three largest groups were from Syria, 625 (83 per cent), Afghanistan, 40 (five per cent), and Iraq 35 (four per cent), Eurostat said.
Bulgaria received 20 resettled refugees in 2018, the statistics agency said.
The 28 member states of the EU granted protection status to nearly 333 400 asylum seekers in 2018, down by almost 40 per cent from 2017 (533 000).
In addition to these, the EU member states received more than 24 800 resettled refugees.
The largest group of beneficiaries of protection status in the EU in 2018 remained citizens of Syria (96 100 people, or 29 per cent of the total number of people granted protection status in the EU member states), followed by citizens of Afghanistan (53 500 or 16 per cent) and those of Iraq (24 600 or seven per cent), as compared with 2017 when 172 900 or 32 per cent of asylum seekers granted protection were Syrians, 99 800 or 19% were Afghanis and 63 800 or 12 per cent were Iraqis.
Syrians were the largest group granted protection status in 16 EU countries in 2018.
Of the 96 100 Syrians granted protection status in the EU, almost 70 per cent were recorded in Germany (67 000), Eurostat said.
(Archive photo: J Owens/VOA)
