Albanian asylum applications registered a massive jump on June of 2020.

After a sharp decline in April, Albanian asylum applications have shown an upward trend in June, although at much lower rates compared to the pre-crisis period of Covid-19.

In June, when the gradual reopening of flights and land travel resumed, the European Asylum Support Office (EASO) data showed that there were 394 asylum applications, of which 73% were first-time applications and the rest were re-applications.  Compared to May, when there were only 90 applications in total, cases increased four-fold.

In January and February, when the movement situation was normal, on average there were more than 1000 asylum applications per month from Albanians in one of the European Union countries, while in June, applications reached almost 40% of the pre-crisis level.

EASO notes that the level of applications from Albania is high, although the country ranks among the countries with the highest rejection rates, along with countries such as Bangladesh, Gambia, Georgia, India, Kazakhstan, Moldova, Serbia, and Ukraine.

Despite the difficulties to move and the fact that Albanian citizens are not allowed to travel and fly to EU countries, in June, asylum applications from Albania (394) were higher than all Balkan countries. Behind us are the citizens of Kosovo, with 185 asylum applications, followed by Serbia (134), Bosnia (97), Macedonia (44) and finally Montenegro (10 applications).