The Department of Immigration in Luxembourg's Ministry for Foreign and European Affairs has confirmed that they have received a total of 269 applications for international protection (asylum) during October.
This number is up significantly up from the 199 recorded in September this year, but is much smaller than the figure of 381 who applied for asylum during October 2015. To date, the total number of requests for asylum in Luxembourg this year has been 1,690, compared to 1,595 in the first ten months of 2015 and 894 for the same period in 2014 (in which the total was 1,091).
The majority of the asylum applications have come from people leaving Serbia (44) and Albania (42), with 36 from Kosovo; in total, 156 have come from Europe, 62 from Africa and 48 from Asia. In the first ten months of the year, there have been the most applications from people fleeing Syria (238), followed by Kosovo (192) and Albania (188).
In October, 306 decisions were taken by the ministry here concerning applications for asylum, of which 102 were granted refugee status. 55 were refused asylum and 21 were sent back to other countries where they had first entered Europe, including 4 to Spain and 6 to Italy. 22 were repatriated, of which 18 went voluntarily and 4 were forcibly removed.
