The main countries of citizenship of these applicants were Afghanistan (20,400 or 8% of the total number of applicants), Russia (20,100 or 8%), Somalia (19,100 or 7%), Iraq (18,700 or 7%) and Kosovo (14,200 or 5%).

These data on asylum applicants in the EU27 are taken from a report issued by Eurostat, the statistical office of the European Union.

In 2009, the highest number of applicants were registered in France (47,600 applicants) followed by Germany (31,800), the United Kingdom (30,300), Sweden (24,200), Belgium (21, 600), Italy (17,500), the Netherlands (16,100), Greece (15,900) and Austria (15,800).

When compared with the population of each EU Member State, the highest rates of applicants registered were recorded in Malta (5,800 applicants per million inhabitants), Cyprus (3,300), Sweden (2,600), Belgium (2,000) and Austria (1,900).

In some EU Member States, a large proportion of the applicants came from a single country. The Member States with the highest concentrations were Malta (60% of the applicants came from Somalia), Lithuania (54% from Russia), Poland (54% from Russia), Hungary (38% from Kosovo) and the Netherlands (37% from Somalia).

First instance decisions
In 2009 in the EU27, 229,500 first instance decisions5 were made on asylum applications. There were 166,900 rejections (73% of decisions), 27,600 applicants (12%) were granted refugee status, 26,200 (11%) subsidiary protection and 8,900 (4%) were granted authorisation to stay for humanitarian reasons. It should be noted that first instance decisions made in 2009 may refer to applications registered in previous years.

The proportion of positive decisions varies considerably among Member States. However, it should be kept in mind that the country of origin of applicants also differs greatly between Member States.