Close to a quarter of a million people applied for asylum in Germany in 2017, meaning it was still the number one destination for asylum seekers in Europe.
A total of 22,500 people applied for asylum in the Bundesrepublik last year, figures released on Monday by the European asylum authority EASO show.
That total marked a 70 percent drop from 2016 when three quarters of a million people applied for asylum.
Across the whole of the EU plus Switzerland, Norway and Iceland, the number of asylum applications dropped by 44 percent from 1.3 million to 728,000. That was the second year in a row that the number of applications dropped after the high point of the refugee crisis in 2015.
Most of the applications had come from citizens of Iraq, Syria and Afghanistan - all countries that have been torn apart by civil war in recent years.
In some countries, including Italy, Greece and Spain, the number of applications for asylum grew last year.
The decline in Europe-wide applications is set to continue in 2018; up until April, 197,000 applications were made across the continent.
SOURCE: The Local
