Long-term trends

Asylum seeking increased substantially with the fall of the Iron Curtain and reached a peak in 1992, as a result of the crisis in the former Yugoslavia. The main host countries reacted by speeding up procedures for deciding asylum applications, introducing restrictive measures such as extending the number of countries subject to visa requirements or by limiting the legal appeal channels. Two general rules also began to be applied to requests for asylum: the safe-country-of-origin rule by which requests for asylum from identified "safe” countries were automatically refused; and the safe-country-of-transit rule, which stipulated that an asylum seeker had to make his/her application in the first "safe” country through which he/she passed. In 2000 and 2001, the increase in regional conflicts increased the number of asylum seekers throughout the OECD area. Since then, the number of asylum seekers arriving in OECD countries has again shown a marked downward trend, with a fall of about 50% since 2001.

Since 2003, France has replaced the United States as the most important destination country for asylum seeking. In absolute numbers, flows also remain high in the United Kingdom and Germany – despite a strong decline in these two countries since 2001/2002. In relative terms, requests remain high in Austria, Sweden, Luxembourg, Belgium and Switzerland – although there were declines in these countries (with the exception of Belgium) from 2004 to 2005.

In all OECD countries, recognition rates are low. Generally significantly less than one in five asylum requests is accepted by the host country. Some asylum seekers are allowed to stay on humanitarian grounds, although they are not formally recognised as refugees. Currently, refugees, other persons admitted for humanitarian reasons and accompanying family account for less than 10% of long-term migration to OECD countries. With the continuing fall in asylum seeking, this proportion is likely to fall as well.