There were close to 261 000 asylum applicants in the 27 member states of the European Union in 2009, the largest groups coming from Afghanistan, Russia, Somalia, Iraq and Kosovo, EU statistics office Eurostat said on May 4 2010.
 
In Bulgaria, there were 855 asylum applicants in 2009. The three largest groups were 305 from Iraq, while 125 were stateless and 60 were from Afghanistan.
 
Bulgaria recorded 645 decisions in 2009 about asylum applications. It agreed in 270 cases, giving refugee status to 40 people and "subsidiary protection" to 230 people. A total of 375 applications were refused.
 
"Subsidiary protection", in official terms, means a third country national or a stateless person who does not qualify as a refugee but in respect of whom substantial grounds have been shown for believing that the person concerned, if returned to his or her country of origin, or in the case of a stateless person, to his or her country of former habitual residence, would face a real risk of suffering serious harm and is unable, or, owing to such risk, unwilling to avail himself or herself of the protection of that country.
 
Eurostat said that, of the asylum applicants registered in the EU in 2009, there were 20 400 from Afghanistan and 20 100 from Russia, each adding up to about eight per cent of the total number of applicants.
 
There were 19 100 from Somalia, 18 700 from Iraq, and 14 200 (five per cent of the total) from Kosovo, the latter under the provisions of UN Security Council Resolution 1244.
 
Eurostat said that 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 (5800 applicants per million inhabitants), Cyprus4 (3300), Sweden (2600), Belgium (2000) and Austria (1900).

In some EU countries, a large proportion of the applicants came from a single country.
 
The EU countries with the highest concentrations were Malta (60 per cent of the applicants came from Somalia), Lithuania (54 per cent from Russia), Poland (54 per cent from Russia), Hungary (38 per cent from Kosovo under UN Security Council Resolution 1244) and the Netherlands (37 per cent from Somalia).
 
In 2009 in the EU27, 229 500 first instance decisions were made on asylum applications.
 
There were 166 900 rejections (73 per cent of decisions), 27 600 applicants (12 per cent) were granted refugee status, 26 200 (11 per cent) subsidiary protection and 8900 (four per cent) 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, Eurostat said.
 
"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," Eurostat said.