Lithuania granted asylum to 75 foreigners in 2014

In 2014 Lithuania granted asylum to 75 people. Thirty of them were from Afghanistan (40.3 percent), 25 from Ukraine (31.2 percent) and 10 from Russia (14.3 percent).

The largest group of beneficiaries of protection status in the EU in 2014 were citizens of Syria (68,400 people or 37 percent of the total number of persons granted protection status in the 27 EU Member States for which data are available), followed at a distance by citizens of Eritrea (14,600 or 8 percent) and those of Afghanistan (14,100 or 8 percent). Together, the three groups accounted for more than half of all people granted protection status in the EU in 2014.

Syrians, whose number has almost doubled compared with 2013 and quadrupled since 2012, represented in 2014 the largest group granted protection status in nearly half of the Member States. Of the 68,400 Syrians granted protection status in the EU, more than 60 percent were recorded in two Member States: Germany (25,700) and Sweden (16,800). Of the 14,600 Eritreans granted protection, more than three-quarters were registered in three EU Member States: Sweden (5,300), the Netherlands (3,600) and the United Kingdom (2,300). Of the 14,100 Afghans, 5,000 were granted protection status in Germany and 2,400 in Italy.

In 2014, the highest numbers of persons granted protection status were registered in Germany (47,600, or +82 percent compared with 2013) and Sweden (33,000, or +25 percent), followed by France (20 600, or +27 percent) and Italy (20,600, or +42 percent).

Out of the 185,000 persons who were granted protection status in 2014 in the 27 EU Member States for which data are available, 104 000 persons were granted refugee status (56 percent of all positive decisions), 61,000 subsidiary protection (33 percent) and 20,000 authorisation to stay for humanitarian reasons (11 percent). In addition, the EU Member States received almost 6,500 resettled refugees. It should be noted that, while both refugee and subsidiary protection status are defined by EU law, humanitarian status is granted on the basis of national legislation.