The highest number of asylum seekers in Bulgaria last year are people from Afghanistan - 1050. For the past 15 years people from Afghanistan who demanded asylum in our country are 25,000. This is evidence from Eurostat's first analysis of the number of asylum seekers for the in EU countries in 2017.

In the second position is Iraq, the number of asylum seekers was 955 people, and the third was Syria - 940, according to European statistics, cited by BTA.

For the first two months of this year, 224 people sought refuge in Bulgaria, with the number of Syrians being the largest - 150, followed by Iraqi representatives - 35 and Afghanistan - 20. A refugee status has been received by about 60 people, humanitarian status - 98, and a refusal was given to about 180 people.

According to the State Agency for Refugees, for the 15-year period, the largest group of asylum seekers is from Afghanistan with about 25 thousand people. The second largest is the group of people from Syria - about 21 thousand, and third - from Iraq - about 19 thousand.

Nearly 650,000 people have applied for international protection in the EU for the first time in 2017, according to Eurostat. This is close to half of those who applied for asylum in the EU in 2016 when their number exceeded 1.2 million people.

Syrians (102,400 candidates), Iraqis (47,500) and Afghans (43,600) remain mainly those seeking international protection in the EU Member States in 2017.

The majority of Syrians have sought shelter in Germany - nearly 50,000, in Greece - about 16,000, and in Austria - over 7,000.

Germany is the country with the highest number of asylum seekers last year - more than 200,000 or about 30 per cent of the total number of asylum seekers in the EU. It is followed by Italy - 127,000 (or 20 per cent), France - 91,000 (or 14 per cent), Greece - 57,000 (or 9 per cent), and Great Britain - 33,000 (or 5 per cent).

The Eurostat analysis also takes some interesting details about the nationality of asylum seekers in some EU countries: for example, the most compact group of asylum seekers in Spain is from Venezuela - over 10 000 asylum applications. In France, the largest number of asylum seekers is Albania - about 12,000, in Italy - most are asylum seekers are Nigerian - nearly 25,000, in Poland - the most compact group comes from Russia - over 2000, etc.

A total of 222,000 were granted refugee status in the EU in 2017 at first instance, 159,000 were granted subsidiary protection status (as victims of military conflicts) and 63,000 were granted a residence permit for humanitarian reasons, Eurostat reported.