Hundreds of migrants march down a highway towards Turkeyís western border with Greece and Bulgaria (Picture: AP Photo)

Statisticians reckon only one in five migrants claiming asylum in Europe are from Syria.

Eurostat, the EU’s official statistics agency, claims 217,000 migrants arrived in the EU in April, May and June this year.

The agency calculated that 27,000 of these were from Afghanistan, 17,700 were from Albania, 13,900 were from Iraq. Syrians made up 44,000 of these figures.

Q2 2015 first time applicants: Syria 44 000, Afghanistan 27 000, Albania 17 700 #Eurostat http://t.co/UpI8HxH8rh pic.twitter.com/hKusZrhTVY — EU_Eurostat (@EU_Eurostat) September 18, 2015

Other migrants are from Eritrea, Ukraine, Pakistan, Kosovo, Serbia, Nigeria, Georgia, India, Vietnam, Somalia, the Gambia, Sri Lanka, Bosnia, Libya and Russia.


Nearly 600 000 persons with asylum applications pending in the EU at end June 2015 #Eurostat http://t.co/UpI8HxH8rh pic.twitter.com/NM6psUnri2 — EU_Eurostat (@EU_Eurostat) September 18, 2015

Both Afghanistan and Iraq are unsettled regions with British soldiers still on the ground to help stabilise the regions. Albania, however, is at peace.

A boy cries as Syrian refugees and migrants push against a police barricade as they march along the highway towards the Turkish-Greek border at Edirne (Picture:Getty Images)

Some Tory MPs claimed the figures exposed ‘a lie’ peddled by the left wing media.



David Davies, Tory MP for Monmouth, told The Daily Mail:

This exposes the lie peddled in some quarters that vast numbers of those reaching Europe are from Syria. Most people who are escaping the war will go to camps in Lebanon or Jordan. Many of those who have opted to risk their lives to come to Europe have done so for economic reasons.

Of course, the figures only show the breakdown for the beginning of this year.

Refugees who want to go to Europe walk towards the Edirne city center in Edirne, Turkey (Picture:Getty Images)

Half a million people have arrived in Europe so far this year with 156,000 arriving in August alone. Many of those have risked their lives by paying people smugglers to ferry them across the Mediterranean.

More than 250,000 of those have reached Greece and Italy while Hungary has closed its border with Croatia and Serbia and started laying razor wire to keep refugees away.

A man carries a sleeping child (Picture:Getty Images)

After Angela Merkel declared any Syrian reaching Germany could claim asylum, Berlin was forced to closed its border causing more turmoil.

The overall number of migrants claiming asylum in Europe has doubled compared to the same period last year.

Here’s the document in full so you can decide for yourself.

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