Asylum applications in EU fall to pre-crisis levels

Applications for political asylum in the European Union dropped last year to levels seen before Europe's migration crisis in 2015, the EU statistics agency said on Thursday.
The findings confirm a downward trend recorded by EU border and coast guard agency Frontex, which estimated that around 150,000 people entered the EU through irregular crossings last year, the fewest in five years and far below the peak of more than a million recorded in 2015.
That year saw Europe's biggest spike in migration since World War Two, prompted by an influx of refugees from Syria's civil war and a significant rise in numbers from other areas of the Middle East and Africa plagued by conflict and deprivation.
At the peak of the crisis, the number of first-time asylum seekers in the EU exceeded 1.2 million.
In 2018, however, the number of first-time asylum seekers fell to around 580...