European Asylum Support Office publishes its latest report on Syria

The European Asylum Support Office (EASO) published its Country of Origin Information (COI) on Syria yesterday, as part of its Syria reports for 2019-2020. These reports provide relevant information for the determination of international protection status for Syrian asylum seekers and is used in the development of a country guidance note on Syria.

The report confirms that Syrian citizens continued to be the top in the list of citizens applying for asylum in the EU+ uninterruptedly since 2013, although the number of applications lodged between January and September 2019 (some 51,200) was lower than in the same period in 2018 (about 57 000). Three in every four Syrian applications (almost 75%) were lodged in four EU+ countries.

The report details that Syrian applicants received more first-instance decisions than any other citizenship group. Since the beginning of 2019, Syrian applicants have been issued some 58,300 decisions. Syria was also the country of origin whose nationals had the most cases pending at first instance in the EU+. At the end of September 2019, there were some 44,600 Syrian applications awaiting a first-instance decision, around 80% of which were pending in just five EU+ countries.

The full report is available here.