Lithuania leads Baltics in terms of granted protection to asylum seekers; Latvia places second

VILNIUS - Lithuania granted more asylum applications than Latvia and Estonia last year, according to figures released by the EU statistics office Eurostat.  

Lithuania granted asylum status to 140 immigrants and took in another 20 third-country nationals under a resettlement program.  

Syrian, Russian and Tajik citizens were the largest groups of those granted protection in Lithuania last year, at 55, 30 and 25, respectively. 

Latvia granted asylum to 30 third-country nationals, and Estonia made positive decisions on 20 asylum applications and received 30 resettled refugees. 

Poland granted asylum to 435 individuals, but it refused to take in nationals of Middle Eastern countries when EU member states decided to share the burden following a refugee influx several years ago. 

Out of the 435 people granted protection in Poland last year, 95 were Ukrainian citizens and 90 were Russian citizens.  

All 28 EU member states granted protection status to nearly 333,400 asylum seekers in

2018, down by almost 40 percent compared with 2017.  

Syria's citizens make up the largest group of those granted protection status in the bloc, following by citizens of Afghanistan and Iraq.