BERLIN: Germany said on Monday that it no longer took top spot in the European Union for new asylum applications, as a media report citing EU data put France and Spain ahead.

Interior Minister Nancy Faeser said the latest figures reflected measures taken to restrain “irregular migration towards Europe as a whole as well as to Germany itself”.

“For the first time in years Germany is no longer the country in which the most applications are filed” in Europe, she added, as authorities reported fewer than 10,000 new cases in March.

The Welt am Sonntag newspaper had reported, citing a confidential EU Commission report, that France and Spain had both received more requests for asylum in the first quarter of the year.

Eurostat data published for February alone appeared to match such a trend, showing that Germany recorded 12,775 new asylum applications compared to 13,065 in France and 12,975 in Spain.

Germany’s office for migration and refugees said that first-time asylum applications for January to March fell by almost 45 percent compared to the period in 2024. Syrian, Afghan and Turkish nationals had topped the countries of origin for applications.

Published in Dawn, April 8th, 2025