Eurostat: EU, 3 asylum seekers in 10 are minors. In 2020, 129,000 applications lodged from children mainly from Asia and Africa

“In 2020, 129,630 children (persons under 18 years old) lodged a first-time application for asylum in the EU which corresponds to 31% of the total number of first-time asylum applications recorded in the EU”. The shocking figure is released in Brussels today by the European Commission’s Statistical Office Eurostat. “Among those children, 10% were unaccompanied minors corresponding to 3% of the total number of first-time asylum applicants”. In the EU Member States, the share of children and teens in the total number of first-time asylum applicants varied in 2020 from 54% in Germany to 6% in Slovakia, whereas the share of unaccompanied minors in the total number of first-time asylum applicants was the highest in Bulgaria (23%) and the lowest in Spain (0.1%). In the Czech Republic, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Hungary “no applications from unaccompanied minors were registered in 2020”. Concerning the country of citizenship of minor first-time asylum applicants in 2020, more than half (52%) of the children had a citizenship of an Asian country, 22% an African citizenship, 13% an American citizenship, and 9% a (non-EU) European country citizenship. Syrian was the main citizenship of the minor first-time asylum applicants in 2020 (25% of the total number of first-time asylum applicant children).

Valentina Bombelli