More than 1.1 million people who sought asylum in Europe during the continent’s biggest refugee crisis since the second world war were still waiting up to two years later to hear whether they would be allowed to stay, according to a study. In the first Europe-wide analysis of the status of asylum seekers who arrived in Norway, Switzerland and the 28-member EU during the 2015-16 crisis, the Pew Research Center estimated more than half were still in limbo in December last year.

The research also produced individual country data showing that how fast applications were handled varied dramatically according not just to the nationality of the asylum seeker but to the country in which they filed their demand, with Hungary and Greece proving particularly slow. With countries working through the backlog at wildly different rates and asylum seekers continuing to arrive, the researchers said the most recent available figures showed pending asylum applications still numbered 990,500 in June this year. The study analysed data from Eurostat, the European statistics authority, and other sources, including NGOs, to estimate how many of the 2.2 million who applied for asylum during the refugee surge still did not have a decision at the end of last year.(theguardian)…[+]