The European Union asylum agency has reported that despite an overall decline in asylum applications in Germany, Afghan nationals continue to represent the largest group of applicants in the country. According to the report, a total of 51,147 asylum requests, including first-time and repeat applications, were registered in Germany during the first six months of 2026.<\/p>\n
This figure marks a 27 percent decrease compared to roughly 70,000 applications during the same period in 2025. Nevertheless, Afghans account for 37 percent of all applicants, maintaining their position at the top. Following them, Turkish and Syrian nationals each submitted 9 percent of the applications.<\/p>\n
At the broader European level, France recorded the highest number of asylum seekers in the first half of 2026 within the European Union, along with Norway and Switzerland, with 65,538 requests. Italy and Spain followed with 63,985 and 53,888 applications respectively.<\/p>\n
According to the confidential report obtained by the newspaper Welt am Sonntag, a total of 321,627 asylum applications were submitted across the EU, Norway, and Switzerland in the first six months of this year, marking a 19.3 percent decrease from the previous year. Among these, Afghans accounted for the largest group with 37,419 applications, followed by citizens of Venezuela and Bangladesh.<\/p>\n
The report emphasizes that approximately four out of every ten Afghan asylum seekers in Europe, Norway, and Switzerland choose Germany as their destination. France ranks as the second most popular destination, where over one-fifth of Afghan applicants submit their claims.<\/p>\n
Another section of the report highlights the rapidly deteriorating humanitarian situation in Afghanistan, which observers link directly to the ongoing extensive restrictions imposed by the Taliban regime on the fundamental rights of citizens, especially women and girls. The European Union has also warned that regional developments, particularly in the Middle East, could influence migration trends to Europe in the coming months.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Afghans remain the largest group of asylum seekers in Germany despite a 27% drop in applications, with France, Italy, and Spain also seeing significant numbers.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":16640,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[17,2,3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-16641","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-important-news","category-migrant-news","category-top-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16641","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16641"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16641\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/16640"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16641"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16641"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16641"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}