Last year, the European Union planned to introduce reforms to its migration policies, aimed at gaining better control over the migration situation into Europe. What's left of all those plans one year on?
One year after the introduction of so-called 'anchor centers' for asylum seekers in Germany, the interior ministry delivered its first report, saying the new concept was a success. But not everyone is happy with their performance.
Svein Ludvigsen was sentenced to five years in jail for having sexually abused three young asylum seekers when he was a regional governor. Between 2011 and 2017, Ludvigsen reportedly demanded sex in exchange for granting a stay permit and threatened expulsion if the asylum seeker refused.
Germany has one of the highest numbers of refugees of any country worldwide, according to the UNHCR. But relative to the size of its population and economy, the figures for Germany tell a somewhat different story.
In France, asylum seekers who do not speak French - or who don’t speak it well enough - must use interpreters to tell their story at Ofpra (French Office for Protection for Refugees and Stateless people) or the CNDA (France's National Court of Asylum). Interpreting requires rigor and neutrality. However, in practice, and despite the importance of the issue, translation errors do occur.
There's been a sharp drop in migrant arrivals in Italy by sea this year, according to the Italian interior minister. There's also been a drop in asylum requests in the Southern European country.
The number of applications for asylum in the EU is back up. About 206,500 applications were submitted during the first four months of 2019, compared with 179,000 in 2018, according to the European Asylum Support Office.
Two Afghan families were forced to leave Hungary and return to Serbia this week after their asylum claims were rejected. The chief of the UN refugee agency, UNHCR, has spoken out about the expulsion of the Afghans - among them a pregnant woman - calling it "a serious violation of international law."
According to the European Union's statistics agency, more than 300,000 people were granted asylum within the bloc in 2018, a drop of nearly 40 percent compared to 2017. Almost 30 percent of beneficiaries were Syrians.
The German Interior Minister Horst Seehofer is planning a new law to manage migration which is expected to be passed by the German cabinet in April 2019. The new law will seek to get tough on asylum seekers who lied about, or tried to obscure, their real identities in the hope of obtaining asylum.
The number of first-time asylum applications in the European Union has fallen to 580,845, Eurostat has reported. At the height of the migrant movements into Europe in 2015, asylum applications exceeded 1.2 million.
Have thousands of war criminals sought asylum in Germany in recent years? A newspaper report alleges authorities failed to investigate a large amount of leads they received at the height of the refugee crisis.