NUMBER OF APPLICATIONS
In 2024, 39,615 persons filed an application for international protection at the Immigration Office (IO). This includes 484 persons who arrived in Belgium as part of resettlement.
As a result, the total number of applicants is 11.6 % higher than in 2023 (when 35,507 persons filed an application) and 7.2 % higher than in 2022.
An average of 3,301 applicants per month were registered in 2024. A peak was reached in October when 4,383 persons filed an application. This was the highest number since the autumn of 2015.
In 2024, the main countries of origin of applicants for international protection were Palestine, Syria, Afghanistan, Eritrea and Turkey.
In 2024, 6,469 persons filed a subsequent application for international protection, 9% more than last year. Percentage-wise, the share of subsequent applications in the total number of applications decreased very slightly compared to the previous year (16.3 % in 2024 compared to 16.7 % in 2023). For certain top 10 countries such as Afghanistan (47.2 %) and Georgia (28.1 %), the percentage of subsequent applications remains remarkably high.
In 2024, the IO registered 2,345 applicants for international protection who pretended to be unaccompanied foreign minors (UAM). This is a decrease of 9.6 % compared to 2023. After an age assessment by the Guardianship Service, 823 of them were classified as adults. As a result, the number of applicants considered as UAMs amounts to 1,522. Not all age assessments have yet been completed. 86.1 % of the applicants for international protection who declared to be unaccompanied foreign minors, are boys and 13.9 % are girls. 21.9% of them are from Eritrea, 18 % from Syria and 16.9 % from Afghanistan.
More detailed information on the applicants can be found in the monthly statistics on international protection on the website of the Immigration Office.
RECORD NUMBER OF DECISIONS
In 2024, the CGRS took a record number of decisions. The CGRS took a decision in 27,471 cases, concerning 34,052 persons.
In 26,474 cases (32,839 persons), it was a final decision. The remaining 997 cases (1,213 persons) involved a decision of admissibility.
This represents a 14 % increase compared to last year.
This increase was not only achieved through the recruitment of new protection officers. The CGRS also continues to focus on special actions to increase efficiency while maintaining the quality of the decisions and taking into account the well-being of its staff. Some of the measures taken or further developed over the past year include:
- Shortening personal interviews if possible.
- Further intensification of cooperation with the Immigration Office.
- Enhanced screening of cases to support and facilitate processing.
- The development of a Fast Track Procedure to speed up a final decision for certain applications that have little chance of receiving protection status. This procedure covers safe countries of origin (Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Northern Macedonia, Kosovo, Montenegro, Serbia and India) as well as Georgia, Moldova and the Democratic Republic of Congo. In 2024, the average processing time for the safe countries of origin was 14 working days. For the other countries (Congo, Georgia and Moldova), the average processing time was 43 working days.
- Preparatory phase launched to roll out cross-cutting measures to support case processing and to run new units on a voluntary basis according to an updated organisational model (different work organisation and division of tasks within the team).
- Recruiting 58 protection officers to be integrated into a separate cell.
In 2024, in 47.2% of the final decisions, the CGRS considered that the applicant actually needed an international protection status. As a result, the protection rate was higher than in previous years (43.5 % in 2023 and 43 % in 2022). This can mainly be explained by the high number of Palestinian cases processed last year. In many of these cases, an international protection status was granted.
45.3 % of these decisions were decisions granting refugee status and 1.9% were decisions granting subsidiary protection status.
The highest number of recognized refugee statuses in 2024 were granted to Palestinians (3,281), Syrians (2,774), Eritreans (2,155) and Afghans (1,944). The highest number of subsidiary protection statuses were granted to Yemenis (232), Syrians (169) and Sudanese (58) in 2024.
The number of inadmissibility decisions (these are mainly subsequent applications, i.e. persons who file another application, and applications from persons who already obtained protection status in another EU member state) decreased compared to last year, although their share remains high. In 2024, their share amounted to 14.4% of all decisions. In 2023, it was 15.8 %. These cases should be processed as a priority. Inadmissibility decisions excluded, the protection rate amounts to 55.5 %.
Although the CGRS took a decision for 34,052 persons in 2024, the caseload remains particularly high. At the end of 2024, the caseload at the CGRS amounted to 26,619 cases (32,007 persons). This caseload does not include all the files for which the IO already registered an application but which have not yet been transferred to the CGRS. After the application has been registered and filed, the Immigration Office organizes a short interview. The Immigration Office also first examines whether Belgium is the responsible member state to process the application for international protection (the so-called “Dublin procedure”). Only when it is determined that Belgium is the responsible member state, the file is transferred to the CGRS.
It is clear that in addition to internal efficiency measures, additional staff is needed to clear the backlog given the high influx.