Montag, 7. September 2015

Urgent need for a more equal distribution of asylum seekers across Europe.


In order to measure the burden of asylum seekers for individual countries I use the following statistic: the annualized monthly rate of asylum applications per million inhabitants (AMAPMI).


AMAPMI = monthly asylum applications *12 / inhabitants (million)

Applying this formula to the latest data for the average of the second quarter of 2015 (asylum applications and population data downloaded from Eurostat website) gives the following rank order of AMAPMI by European country, both EU and outside EU, where data are available. 

The results show that the rank order of AMAPMI has barely changed, with Hungary, Germany, Austria and Sweden still carrying the greatest burden, while some large European countries like the UK carry a minimal burden. There is an urgent need for a more equal and just distribution of asylum seekers across Europe.