The Department of Immigration in Luxembourg's Ministry for Foreign and European Affairs has confirmed that they have received a total of 199 applications for international protection (asylum) during September.
This number is up slightly from the 197 recorded in August this year, but is much smaller than the figure of 374 who applied for asylum during September 2015. To date, the total number of requests for asylum in Luxembourg has been 1,421, compared to 1,214 in the first nine months of 2015 and 766 for the same period in 2014 (in which the total was 1,091).
The majority of the asylum applications have come from people leaving Albania (39), with 35 from Serbia and 31 from Kosovo; in total, 128 have come from Europe, 39 from Africa and 32 from Asia. In the first nine months of the year, there have been the most applications from people fleeing Syria (222), followed by Kosovo (156) and Iraq (150).
In September, 380 decisions were taken by the ministry here concerning applications for asylum, of which 103 were granted refugee status. 27 were refused asylum and 16 were sent back to other countries where they had first entered Europe: 5 to Spain and Italy, 4 to Germany and 1 from France and the Netherlands respectively. 45 were repatriated, of which 30 went voluntarily and 15 were forcibly removed.
