```html Syrians No Longer with the Most Asylum Applications in Austria ```

Following the change of power in Damascus and the halt in processing Syrian asylum applications, the number of such requests in Austria continues to decline. In February, 1,397 applications were submitted, which is a decrease of 37 percent compared to the same month in 2024. The last time figures were this low was in 2020.

315 Asylum Applications from Syrians

This is attributed to the Syrians. In February, 315 applications were submitted. This is just a little more than half of the requests from January (618). Even more telling is the comparison to February of the previous year. At that time, 1,308 applications were submitted by Syrians.

Currently, Syrian asylum applications are only processed in exceptional cases. Thus, only 39 were granted asylum status this year. For comparison: 860 Afghans were granted asylum. In total, asylum was granted in 1,240 cases in 2025. Additionally, there are 444 residence permits either for subsidiary protection or for reasons deemed worthy of consideration.

Afghans with Most Asylum Applications

At the top of the application statistics in February, as in January, is Afghanistan. Here, 568 applications were submitted, with only 120 being new requests. The rest are follow-up applications or applications from children born in Austria. A decision by the European Court of Justice continues to have an impact here, stating that no individual procedure is required for Afghan women. Therefore, female beneficiaries of protection in Austria now frequently apply for asylum if only subsidiary protection was granted.

In total, there were 3,315 asylum applications this year. In the first two months of the previous year, there were 4,489. Almost 52 percent of the applicants are under 18.

Family Reunification Remains Limited

Regarding family reunification, which the government intends to temporarily suspend, there is currently little activity. While there were almost 1,000 entries for the purpose of family reunification in the comparison month of 2024, this number has shrunk to 60 in February of this year. This is also due to the fact that applications from Syrians are currently being accepted but are generally not being processed for the time being.

Concerning the international situation, there were 131,056 asylum applications in the EU by the end of February, a decrease of 19 percent compared to the previous year. According to the Ministry of the Interior, Austria ranks ninth in the Europe-wide statistics when adjusted for population.

The situation in basic care is also slowly easing. Currently, over 66,000 people are being adequately cared for. This is about 1,500 fewer than at the beginning of the year. Fifty-five percent of the people in basic care are Ukrainians. If they were excluded, the numbers would be roughly at the levels of 2020/2021, before the Russian aggression in Ukraine.

FPÖ Sees "Poor Diversionary Tactic"

Interior Minister Gerhard Karner (ÖVP) expressed satisfaction on Saturday. "The goal of reducing illegal migration to zero is being consistently pursued. The path taken and the measures implemented, such as strict border controls or the halt of family reunification, are showing effects. This work will be consistently continued."

The FPÖ came to a completely different conclusion: "This supposed success story of the black-red-pink government is nothing more than a poor diversionary tactic from their own failure in asylum policy," said FPÖ security spokesman Gernot Darmann in a statement. Karner announced in December that asylum applications from Syria would no longer be accepted - "but he broke this promise as early as January. In February alone, 315 asylum applications from Syrians were submitted again," said the FPÖ representative. He also criticized the fact that Syrians are not being deported to their country of origin.

(APA/Red)

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