Valletta, 28 February 2024 (dpa/MIA) - The number of asylum seekers in Europe significantly exceeded the one million mark last year, according to the European Union's asylum agency, based on the Mediterranean island of Malta.

The agency registered a total of 1.14 million applications in the 27 EU member states, Norway and Switzerland, according to the annual report published in Valletta on Wednesday.

Compared to the previous year, this represents an increase of 18%.

According to the asylum agency, most applicants once again came from the civil war country of Syria, followed by Afghanistan.

Towards the end of the year, after the start of the new Gaza war in October, an increasing number of Palestinians also wanted to come to Europe.

Germany remained by far the most important destination country, where 334,000 new applications were registered between January and December 2023 according to these figures.

In the previous year, the total number of applications had remained just under the million mark at 996,000. In contrast, significantly more were registered in 2015 (1.4 million) and 2016 (1.3 million).

This does not include more than 4.4 million people from Ukraine who sought refuge in the European Union as a result of the Russian invasion and were granted temporary protection.

Photo: MIA archive