Europe 2023 asylum applications are expected to reach the one million mark–the first time since 2016. The European Union, Norway, and Switzerland received 801,459 asylum applications between the beginning of the year and October, mostly from people from Syria, Afghanistan, and Turkey.
The biggest jumps in application numbers were recorded in Latvia (up 168%) and Estonia (up 119%), while the largest drops were seen in Denmark (down 56%), Malta (down 54%), Cyprus (down 52%) and Austria (down 41%). Hungary had the fewest asylum applications, with only 26 applications since January.
Migration and interior ministers from Cyprus, Greece, Italy, Malta and Spain met and agreed on taking a hard-line stance on migrant crossings. They stressed that if Europe was not proactive in taking a firm stance on migration, the bloc could likely see a continuing growth in extremism as well.
According to French authorities, more migrants have been entering France from Italy in recent weeks. The officials noted that since mid-September, when 8,000 migrants arrived on the Italian island of Lampedusa in the span of just a few days, crossings have increased.
According to Alfonso Cabello, the spokesperson for the regional government in the Canary Islands in Spain, more than 4,300 migrants had arrived on the islands in the last week. This roughly translates to an average of around 500 people a day.
Tensions between the government of the Canary Islands in the Atlantic and the regional government and its counterpart in mainland Spain in Madrid are mounting over how to manage the increase in arrivals.
In the UK, 39 asylum seekers who were evacuated from the Bibby Stockholm barge can now return starting next week (October 19). The barge had to be evacuated in August after routine checks of its water tanks showed the presence of a disease-causing bacteria.
The bacteria has been linked to Legionnaires’ Disease, which can cause atypical pneumonia or lung inflammation and can be fatal if not appropriately treated, particularly among people with weakened immune systems.
