Malta granted protection to 665 Somalis, 550 Eritreans and 270 Syrians among other migrants last year, figures issued by Eurostat show.

The Somalis amounted to 41 per cent of the total number of migrants granted protection.

Eurostat said the EU28 Member States granted protection to 135 700 asylum seekers in 2013, compared with 116 200 in 2012.

Over the last five years, more than 570 000 asylum seekers were granted protection in the EU.

The three largest groups of beneficiaries of protection status in the EU28 in 2013 remained citizens of Syria (35 800 persons or 26% of the total number of persons granted protection status), Afghanistan (16 400 or 12%) and Somalia (9 700 or 7%).

In 2013, the highest number of persons granted protection status was registered in Sweden (26,400), followed by Germany (26,100), France (16,200), Italy (14,500) and the United Kingdom (13,400). All together, these five Member States accounted for more than 70% of all those granted protection status in the EU28.

Malta granted protection to 1,610 including 45 granted refugee status, 1,450 granted subsidiary protection and 115 granted protection for humanitarian reasons.

The rate of recognition of asylum applicants, i.e. the share of positive decisions in the total number of decisions, was 34% for first instance decisions. For final decisions on appeal, the recognition rate was 18%.

The highest rates of recognition for first instance decisions were recorded in Bulgaria (87%), Malta (84%), Romania (64%), Italy and the Netherlands (both 61%), while those for final decisions on appeal were registered in Bulgaria (93%), Italy (78%), Finland (77%), Romania (60%) and the Netherlands (57%).

Source: Times of Malta