Migrant arrivals in Malta drop by one-third in 2020: stats

Migrant

VALLETTA, June 19 (NNN-Xinhua) — The number of migrants arriving in Malta by boat dropped by one-third in 2020, the country’s statistics office said on Friday.

The National Statistics Office said that the number of migrants arriving in Malta dropped by 33 percent to 2,281 from the previous year’s number of 3,405.

The office said that almost 85 percent of the people brought to shore were citizens of African countries while the remaining were citizens of Asian countries.

Malta ranked second after Cyprus for the number of asylum applications per million resident population across European Union (EU) member states.

The National Statistics Office said that 273 migrants were relocated from Malta to another EU country in 2020, a decrease of 55.9 percent compared to the previous year. The majority of relocations were split between Germany and France.