450,000 unprocessed asylum application in Germany

A German newspaper has revealed that there were 450,000 unprocessed asylum applications in the country during 2016, a record number that has surpassed the figures reached last year.

Citing the German Rheinische Post, Turkey’s state-run Anadolu Agency said that the German Bureau of Immigration and Refugees revealed that the number of outstanding asylum application up until the end of this year stood at 450,000, noting that the number was less than 400,000 at the end of the last year.

The reason for this, according to the German newspaper, is that the authorities were behind on processing complex applications that have accumulated over previous years.

During the first half of the year, the average time for processing an asylum application was 6.9 months.

Between January and November 2016, the Bureau received 723,000 asylum application, noting that a large number of these applications were from people who entered Germany in 2015 and could not apply that year.

Germany successfully processed 615,000 applications during 2016; a 156 per cent increase on the number processed last year. The outstanding applications are expected to be processed by the end of spring 2017.

Since 2015, more than a million refugees and migrants arrived in Germany, a large number of whom fled the bloody conflict in Syria.