Malta approved 660 asylum applications in 2018, almost twice the per capita average of the EU.

The EU approved asylum applications to 333,355, which works out to 650 per million population, while Malta’s rate works out to 1,385 per million.

Of the 660 approved applications, 160 were given refugee status and 480 subsidiary protection, while 25 were approved for humanitarian reasons.

Syrians were the largest group of successful applicants (230), with Libya in second place (225) and Eritrea in third (80).

No refugees were resettled to Malta, according to Eurostat, while the EU received 24,815 people.

The number of applications across the EU was down by almost 40% from 2017.

The largest group of beneficiaries of protection status in the EU in 2018 were citizens of Syria (96,100 persons, or 29% of the total), followed by citizens of Afghanistan (53,500 or 16%) and those of Iraq (24,600 or 7%).

In 2017, 172,900 or 32% of asylum seekers granted protection were Syrians, 99,800 or 19% were Afghanis and 63,800 or 12% were Iraqis.

More than 40% of all positive decisions in the EU were granted in Germany.  In 2018, the highest number of persons granted protection status was registered in Germany (139,600), ahead of Italy (47,900) and France (41,400).

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