In 2023 the migration authorities of 27 EU countries as well as Switzerland and Norway reviewed 4,299 applications for political asylum from Belarusians. More than 5.6 thousand such applications were submitted, of which almost 5.2 thousand people did it for the first time. Such figures are provided by the EU Asylum Agency.
Positive decisions on Belarusian applications were made in 81% of cases. Thus 3,482 Belarusian citizens received asylum in the European Union in 2023.
Belarusians most often applied for international protection to the authorities of Poland, Germany and Lithuania. After 2020 the number of Belarusians applying for refugee status increased significantly: in 2019 the number of first asylum applications did not exceed a thousand, in 2023 it reached 5,000 for the first time.