Malta had the highest rate of acceptance of asylum seekers in the final quarter of last year, according to a report by The Economist.

In the report issued earlier this week, Malta had the highest rate of acceptance, at 33 percentage points above the European average of 60 per cent.

According to the report, the reason behind the increase in acceptance rates was that applications from asylum seekers coming from countries which were more likely to be accepted had soared. “Many countries show unusual sympathy for migrants from specific countries to which they have historic ties,” the report said, adding that this phenomenon was also evident in Malta, where all 770 applications from asylum seekers arriving from Libya or the vicinity had been accepted.

In Malta, all 770 applications from Libya or the vicinity had been accepted

In the majority of countries across Europe, Syrians, Eritreans and Iraqis are approved more than 90 per cent of the time, up from about a quarter during the previous year, The Economist said.

Those migrants coming from Syria had a 97 per cent chance of being accepted as refugees, followed by those from Iraq (90 per cent) and Eritrea (86 per cent). The acceptance rate for migrants coming from other countries stood at 28 per cent.

The lowest acceptance rate was recorded in Romania, where it stood at 15 per cent.

The report suggests that this rate could have been due to applicants moving on to richer countries.

When they do, they miss the assessment interviews and are subsequently listed as having been rejected.

The Economist also noted another trend, where countries that are known as being “migrant-friendly” could be receiving a lot of asylum seekers from high-priority source countries – mainly Syria, Iraq and Eritrea.

According to data issued by the statistics office of the European Union, Eurostat, at the end of last year there were 922,800 applications for international protection still under consideration by the responsible national authority.

At the end of the previous year, there were about half as many, at 489,300.