Accepted asylum applicants in the European Union 2008-2020

This statistic shows the number of accepted first instance asylum applications in the EU from 2008 to 2020. Over the period, the number of accepted applicants increased by more than 600 thousand, before decreasing again by more than 400 thousand after its peak year 2016, when the EU accepted 672,890 asylum seekers. The number of accepted asylum applicants in 2020 appears with 211 thousand people lower than the previous year, however this is partly due to the exit of the United Kingdom from the European Union and numbers subsequently referring to the EU-27.