In June this year, the Federal Office for Migration and Refugees (BAMF) registered 6,860 asylum claims. This figure sank by 13.3 percent compared to the previous month, May, when the new government took power.

In the first six months of the year, according to data from BAMF, 72,818 people requested asylum, 61,336 were first requests and 11,482 were reapplications after being refused a first time, or if they had withdrawn their request for any reason the first time.

According to BAMF in the equivalent period (January-June) in the previous year (2024), there were 121,416 first-time applications, meaning that the number of first asylum requests sank by 49.5 percent in 2025.

8,982 of those applications, added BAMF, were for children born in Germany who are still under one year old.

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Syrians and Afghans most likely to apply for asylum in Germany

The majority of the first applications came from Syrian nationals, relatively closely followed by Afghans, then nationals from Turkey, Iraq, Somalia and the Russian Federation. Eritrea, Iran, Guinea and Colombia. The majority of those making reapplications came from Afghan nationals. Putting together their first and reapplications, Afghan nationals accounted for just slightly more (15,181) of the asylum applications in Germany than Syrian nationals (15,127). Syrians and Afghan nationals accounted for just under half of all asylum applications in Germany.

The protection rate in Germany overall in the first six months of the year stood at 18.3 percent. However, this does not reflect the vast differences between the different nationalities' success rates at obtaining protection status. The average wait for asylum stood at 13.1 months for a first and reapplication.

This reduction in the number of asylum applications in Germany has, according to a report in the Welt am Sonntag, removed Germany from the top spot of asylum applications in the EU. In comparison, in the first half of this year, 76,020 people applied for asylum in Spain, 75,428 in France, 62,534 in Italy, 27,718 in Greece and 17,285 in Belgium. Those states with the fewest applications were Hungary with 47, Slovakia with 84 and Lithuania with 152.

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Downward trend mirrored across the EU too

The newspaper added that in the first six months of this year, 388,299 people applied for asylum across the whole of the EU, as well as Norway and Switzerland. Overall, the number of asylum applications also sank by 23 percent.

The German Catholic news agency KNA reported that the majority of asylum applications in the EU as a whole come from Venezuela (48,413), followed by applicants from Afghanistan (41,127) and Syria (23,307). Most Venezuelans apply in Spain, but most Afghans and Syrians want to apply in Germany.

CDU migration expert Lena Düpont told KNA that she believed that apart from a "seasonal effect" the number of asylum applications had sunk because of increased measures and cooperation between the EU and third countries, in particular North African countries like Libya, Tunisia, Morocco, Algeria and Egypt.

The EU has noted that there has been an increase in the number of refugees arriving in Libya. On June 1, the bloc counted 91,000 refugees in Libya, reported KNA, 61 percent more than on January 1, 2024. One of the main reasons for this increase was people fleeing conflict in Sudan and South Sudan. Most of those in Libya were hoping to cross the Mediterranean to Europe.

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German government credits its stricter migration policy

German Interior Minister Alexander Dobrindt welcomed the figures, claiming that it was a result of his government’s stricter migration policies and increased border controls. Dobrindt told the German tabloid Bild that he felt the data showed a "significant success of the changes the government made in migration policy."

The German authorities made decisions on a total of 158,753 asylum applications in the first six months. This included first and reapplications. They refused the applications for 80,586 people. 49,095 of these failed while they were found to have applied for asylum in another EU country before making their way to Germany.

Under the Dublin regulation, EU states like Germany should be able to send this category of applicant back to the first EU state where they registered in Europe. However, this process, despite clear rules, is still facing problems.

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Problems with returning migrants via Dublin regulation

Late on July 8, Bild reported that although the number of asylum applications might be going down in Germany, the government still did not "have control" over the country’s migration policy. This, claimed the newspaper, is because many EU countries are refusing to take back applicants from Germany, even when the German authorities state that they were registered in other EU countries prior to applying for asylum in Germany.

According to information seen by Bild, authorities in Italy, Greece, Bulgaria and Croatia often refuse to accept applicants that Germany is trying to send back. The newspaper claims that in the first half of 2025, Germany tried to send back 3,824 migrants to Italy under the Dublin regulation. The newspaper added that Italy had agreed to take back 4,477 people, some from the previous year’s quota, in theory, but in reality, “not one migrant” had actually been sent from Germany to Italy.

It was a similar story with Greece, according to Bild. Germany applied to send 3,554 migrants back to Greece, but Greece only accepted 78 of them. In reality, just 20 were sent. Croatia reportedly took just 305 from 2,830 people that Germany should have been able to send back to the Balkan country. Bulgaria accepted, according to Bild, 119 of the 1,561 proposed by Germany.

In total, Germany was able to send back 3,109 migrants to other EU countries, although it made applications to send back 20,574 people. According to Bild, that means that Germany was able to send around 15 percent of Dublin-regulated migrants back to the first country of EU entry.

Other countries applied to send 7,937 migrants back to Germany; Germany accepted 2,326. This, reported Bild, was around 29 percent of the total applications.