Malta granted subsidiary protection to 955 migrants last year. A further 290 were granted refugee status and 75 were given protection for humanitarian reasons, EU figures issued today show.

Eurostat said today that EU member states granted protection to almost 340 000 asylum seekers in 2015. Half of the beneficiaries were Syrians.  Since 2008, a total of nearly 1.1 million asylum seekers have been granted protection status in the EU.

Germany granted the most people protection in 2015 (148 200, or +212% compared with 2014), followed by Sweden (34 500, or +4%), Italy (29 600, or +44%), France (26 000, or +26%), the United Kingdom (17 900, or +26%), Austria (17 800, or +77%+) and the Netherlands (17 000, or +29%).

Of all the persons who were granted protection status in 2015 in the EU, 250,900 persons were granted refugee status (74% of all positive decisions), 61 600 subsidiary protection (18%) and 26 500 authorisation to stay for humanitarian reasons (8%).  

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