Spain lags behind rest of EU in granting asylum, says NGO

Spain granted asylum to 12% of applicants last year, the lowest rate among EU countries, putting the country 30 points below the EU average and at the bottom of the table in terms of the rate of asylum granted, a report by the Spanish NGO Commission for Refugee Aid (CEAR) warned on Monday.

In 2023, the number of pending asylum applications in Spain increased by 56%, rising to 191,095 people currently “awaiting a decision on which their lives depend”, according to the CEAR report, Euractiv’s partner EFE reported. Spain.

In the same year, Spain received 163,000 new asylum applications, putting it in third place among all EU member states, behind only Germany (351,510) and France (166,880), said CEAR Director Mónica López.

The CEAR report highlights the seriousness of the problem in Spain and the rest of the EU, with just three days before the World Refugee Day on Thursday.

Applications for international protection for migrants who cannot return to their country because of persecution for various reasons, such as being a refugee, or because they would face serious harm in their country, such as being in need of subsidiary protection, rose by 37.3% in 2023 to the highest level in recent history, “despite the serious obstacles” to accessing the procedure in Spain, the report adds.

Mauricio Valiente, a member of CEAR’s executive board, lamented on Monday that the number of asylum grants in Spain was “extremely low” compared to the EU average, with the Netherlands, Hungary and Estonia “leading the way” with rates of 77% and above.

These figures correspond to a “historical reason” and to Spain’s own “migration model,” which is very “restrictive” in terms of assessing the requirements for granting international protection, a criteria that CEAR is pushing to make more flexible, Valiente said at a press conference.

Regarding applicant profiles, the CEAR report notes an increase in the number of applications submitted by women and children, representing 19% of the total.

Of the ten countries with the most asylum seekers in Spain in 2023, seven are from Latin America. The nationalities with the highest recognition rates were Ukraine, Mali, Burkina Faso, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, Afghanistan, and Palestine. The country with the highest number of pending applications is Colombia, with 30,527 applications, the report found.

According to the report, Colombian applications were classified as having a particularly high rate of “lack of (asylum) protection” in Spain.

Almost 94% of the applications submitted have not been granted asylum in Spain “despite the serious threats suffered by activists and community leaders” in this country, the report warns.

Last week, Spanish NGO Walking Borders revealed a report listing grim facts about the thousands of migrants trying to reach the Spanish coast in search of better living conditions.

Between January and May this year, a total of 5,504 migrants – almost 33 deaths a day, or one migrant every 45 minutes – died trying to reach Spain by making the treacherous sea crossing, a report by Walking Borders revealed.

Citing UN and EU data, the NGO’s report, “Monitoring the Right to Life on the Western Euro-African Border”, pointed out that most migrant deaths occur on the world’s most dangerous route between the west coast of Africa and the Canary Islands, where 4,808 deaths were recorded in the same period.

(Fernando Heller | EuroEFE.Euractiv.es)

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