Analytics, Demography, Latvia, Quality of life

The other EU members with the lowest acceptance rates are Hungary and Poland - 12.3 % and 14.8 % respectively, while the highest rates were recorded in Bulgaria - 90 %, followed by Denmark (85.2 %), Malta (76.2 %), Sweden (74.2 %) and Cyprus (73.1 %).

According to Eurostat data, migrants fleeing active conflict zones had the best chance of winning asylum. Among the largest refugee groups by nationality, nearly all or 94.8 % of those claiming Syrian citizenship succeeded in obtaining asylum, followed by Eritreans - 88.5 %, and Iraqis - 87.1 %. On the other hand, the large numbers of applicants from the Balkans, which has been mostly at peace since 2001, had less success: only 6.4 % of Albanians, 1.9 % of Kosovars and 1.3 % of Serbs gained EU asylum in the first half of this year.

More than 600,000 people have applied for asylum in EU countries in the first half of this year - 58 % more than applied in the first eight months of 2014, and just shy of last year's total of 662,000.

Syrians are the biggest single group of asylum applicants this year, comprising about 20 % of the total. More than half the asylum seekers, in fact, are from just five countries: Syria, Kosovo, Afghanistan, Albania and Iraq. Most - 72 % are male, and 54 % are ages 18 to 34; men in that age bracket account for fully 43 % of asylum applicants.

Germany was by far the top destination for migrants seeking asylum: nearly 41 % of all asylum applicants this year (more than 245,000) applied in Germany, however, Germany approved fewer than half (43.5 %) of the asylum applications it processed in the first half of this year, Hungary had the second-most asylum applicants, about 98,000 (16.3 % of the total).