Brussels, 11/05/2009 (Agence Europe) - In 2008, European Union countries rejected more asylum seekers than during the previous year. Almost 240,000 asylum applicants registered in the EU27. On Friday 8 May, Eurostat, the Statistical Office of the European Communities indicated that, 193 690 decisions were made on asylum applicants, with 141 730 rejections (73% of decisions). According to the UN's High Commission for Refugees, in 2007, around 223,000 demands for asylum were made and 63% of them were rejected. It is becoming quite apparent that it is becoming increasingly difficult to obtain protection in Europe. Most of these applicants were from: Iraq (29 000 or 12% of the total number of applicants), Russia (21 100 or 9%), Somalia (14 300 or 6%), Serbia (13 600 or 6%) and Afghanistan (12 600 or 5%). In 2008, among the Member States for which data are available, the highest number of applicants were registered in France with 41 800 applicants, 31, 765 cases examined, 5,150 approved, with 26,610 rejected. The United Kingdom recorded 30 500 applicants, followed by Germany (26 900), Sweden (24 900), Greece (19 900), Belgium (15 900) and the Netherlands (15 300). When compared with the population of each Member State, the highest rates of applicants registered were recorded in Malta (6 350 applicants per million inhabitants), Cyprus (4 370), Sweden (2 710), Greece (1 775), Austria (1 530) and Belgium (1 495). Out of the 2,685 demands examined in Malta, this small state approved 1,410 of them, around one in two, which is enormous in relation to the size of the island. In some Member States, a large proportion of the applicants came from a single country. The Member States with the highest concentrations were Poland (91% of the applicants came from Russia), Lithuania (77% from Russia), Hungary (52% from Serbia), Luxembourg (48% from Serbia) and Bulgaria (47% from Iraq). Out of all the decisions on asylum made, there were 141 730 rejections (73% of decisions), 24 425 applicants (13%) were granted refugee status, 18 560 (10%) subsidiary protection and 8 970 (5%) were granted authorisation to stay for humanitarian reasons. (B.C./trans/rh)