More than 130,000 requests were filed in 2022. The country is reconnecting with an upward trend committed for a decade and which concerns all of Europe.
by Julia Pascual
With 130,933 requests filed in France in 2022, asylum applications found their level before the health crisis. According to the figures published Tuesday, January 17 by the French Office for the Protection of Refugees and Stateless (OFPRA), the requests increased by 27 % compared to 2021. “It is not a surprise, comments Julien Boucher, the Director General of OFPRA. The parenthesis linked to the COVID is closed. We have returned to a sustainable rise trend for a decade. “In 2019, the year preceding the health crisis, 132,826 protection requests had been recorded by the ‘Ofpra.
“It is all the less a surprise since this progressive increase is found on a European scale, in a very marked way in certain countries”, continues Mr. Boucher. According to the latest data from the European Union agency for asylum, more than 900,000 asylum applications had been recorded between January and end of November 2022 in Europe, against 587,000 over the same period in 2021, or one increase of 53.51 %. France arrives in second position behind Germany and in front of Austria and Spain. “The figures of 2021 can be considered artificially low because the pandemic of COVID-19 assigned both the capacity to travel and to file asylum requests in 2021”, insists the European agency.
“We protect Afghans”
demand in Europe is today carried by Syrian, Afghans and Turkish nationals. Syrian demand is traditionally not important in France and is more towards countries like Germany. On the other hand and for the fifth consecutive year, “Afghan demand is firmly in the lead, with nearly 18,000 requests,” notes the director of OFPRA. The nature of the protection granted to Afghans has evolved from the return of the Taliban to power in the summer of 2021. “Until then, the Afghans benefited essentially from protection based on the war situation in a large part of the country and The resulting general insecurity, details Mr. Boucher. Today, we protect the Afghans because the applicants assert fears linked to the power in place. “
With some 38,000 Afghans protected by OFPRA in 2022, their protection rate was 69 %. These figures do not take into account any protections granted by the national court of asylum law, which the applicants can seize whose initial request has been rejected by OFPRA.
All nationalities combined, the protection rate granted by OFPRA amounted to 29 % in 2022, compared to 26 % in 2021. Among the requests arriving at the top and behind Afghanistan, include nationals of Bangladesh (8,600), Turkey (8,500), Georgia (8,100) and the Democratic Republic of Congo (5,900).
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