Malta has emerged as the EU country that accepted the highest number of asylum applications, according to statistics released by Eurostat yesterday.
More than 65 per cent, or 1,690, of the 2,575 asylum applications processed in 2009 were accepted, compared to 27 per cent throughout the EU.
However, the rate is not indicative of generosity on Malta's part but is the result of the fact that a large proportion of the migrants who land here come from regions that make them eligible for protection, according to the government.
The majority of applicants in Malta, 1,660, were granted subsidiary status, a middle-of-the-road form of protection, and only 0.8 per cent were given the full rights of refugee status. The rest, 0.4 per cent, were granted asylum status on humanitarian grounds.
At the same time, the Maltese authorities' turned down the request of 885 asylum seekers, or 34 per cent of the applications.
The situation in the rest of Europe is different.
According to the EU statistics, during 2009, the EU refused asylum status in 73 per cent of the cases.
The level of positive decisions varied substantially from one country to the other with some being much less permissive than others. Greece, which has a bad reputation among human rights groups, last year received over 14,000 asylum applications and made 165 positive decisions. The country also receives a large number of applications from neighbouring states from where people would not be eligible for status.
Italy, which faces similar migratory flows, also had a low percentage of accepted asylum applications at 38 per cent but in Italy's case immigrants from Sub-Saharan Africa mix with migrants from Eastern-Europe, who are generally less likely to be eligible for status.
Asked whether the statistics indicated that Malta was being too generous when evaluating asylum applications, a spokesman for the Home Affairs Ministry said this was not the case.
"Our problem is that most of the asylum seekers who landed in Malta last year came from Somalia and Eritrea. These nationalities have a very high chance of getting asylum status anywhere in the EU due to the situation in their respective countries. Malta's main migration route is that from Sub-Saharan Africa and these people can either land in Malta or in Italy."
According to Eurostat, Malta last year had the highest concentration of asylum applications from one single country, so much so that 60 per cent of all asylum applications in Malta were made by Somalis.
Asked whether the fact that Malta was granting the highest number of positive asylum decisions in the EU might be attracting more illegal immigrants to the island, the spokesman said this did not seem to be the case either. "This is just a coincidence," the spokesman said.
The fact that Malta followed international rules when it came to the granting of asylum status and that it decided favourably in the majority of cases did not mean it was easy to obtain asylum status on the island, the spokesman said.
According to Eurostat, in 2009, Malta had the highest rate of applications per capita in the EU, amounting to 5,800 applications per million inhabitants. The average in the EU stood at 520 applications per million. The closest to Malta was Cyprus, which had 3,300 applications per million and only 29 per cent were given a positive decision there.