More than a million of Europe's asylum seekers left in limbo

More than 1.1 million people who sought asylum in Europe during the continent’s biggest refugee crisis since the second world war were still waiting up to two years later to hear whether they would be allowed to stay, according to a study.

In the first Europe-wide analysis of the status of asylum seekers who arrived in Norway, Switzerland and the 28-member EU during the 2015-16 crisis, the Pew Research Center estimated more than half were still in limbo in December last year.

The research also produced individual country data showing that how fast applications were handled varied dramatically according not just to the nationality of the asylum seeker but to the country in which they filed their demand, with Hungary and Greece proving particularly slow.

With countries working through the backlog at wildly different rates and asylum seekers continuing to arrive, the researchers said the most recent available figures showed pending asylum applications still numbered 990,500 in June this year.

The study analysed data from Eurostat, the European statistics authority, and other sources, including NGOs, to estimate how many of the 2.2 million who applied for asylum during the refugee surge still did not have a decision at the end of last year.

“Lots of different data is released by governments, but little cross-nationally,” said Phillip Connor, the report’s lead author. “And often, asylum statistics give us only those who have been granted – not those who are still waiting.”

The researchers estimated that 52% of the asylum applications filed in 2015 and 2016 – two years that, together, represent 20% of all applications received in Europe since the mid-1980s – had not been settled by the end of last year.

In an estimated two-thirds of cases (760,000 people), this was because no decision had yet been made, while for the remaining third (385,000 people) it was because applicants were appealing against an initial unfavourable decision.

Applications from an estimated 40% of asylum seekers (885,000) from the period had been granted, the study found, while 3% (75,000) had returned to their home countries and the whereabouts of another 5% (100,000) was unknown.

Of a total of 16 countries of origin, three – Syria, Afghanistan and Iraq – accounted for 53% of all asylum applications in 2015-16, while of the 30 host countries, one – Germany – received almost half (45%) of all asylum seekers.

Connor said one of the report’s key findings was some nationalities had “a far larger share of applicants still waiting for decisions than others”: 89% of those from Albania, 77% from Kosovo, Afghanistan and Iran, and more than 70% from Russia and Serbia, still had not heard whether they could stay.

Significantly more asylum seekers from Pakistan, Bangladesh, Somalia, Sudan and Nigeria were also still waiting for a decision than the average, the researchers found – while only 20% of the 650,000 applications received across Europe from Syrian nationals had not yet been settled.

Syrian applications were typically handled within one to three months during 2015 and 2016 in countries such as Belgium and Germany, the researchers found, while asylum seekers from Gambia and Eritrea, most similarly fleeing armed conflict or forced conscription, could also expect comparatively fast decisions.

And regardless of asylum seekers’ country of origin, the researchers found that the speed with which applications were handled also varied dramatically according to the country processing it. “Some countries were much faster,” Collins said.

In Hungary and Greece, more than 90% of asylum applications filed in 2015 and 2016 had not yet been decided by December last year, the researchers estimated – possibly reflecting strong public disapproval in those countries of the way the EU was handling the refugee issue.

Between 60% and 70% of all applicants in Spain, Finland, Austria, Norway, France and the UK were also still waiting for an asylum decision in late 2016. But two of the top host countries – Germany and Sweden – proved far more efficient, processing at least half of all the applications they received.