Which EU countries have had the most asylum seekers?

One can answer the question a few different ways. First off you can look in simple terms at the number of applications per country. You get a chart that looks like this:

However, if you want to get a sense of the degree of social impact caused by the influx of refugees, you might do better dividing the number of applicants by the number of existing residents in the country. Do that and the chart looks quite different:

As you can see, on this basis, the EU’s biggest recipient country was actually Hungary, followed closely by Sweden. Then Austria, then Norway, then Finland and only then Germany. It’s a useful corrective to the notion that this is primarily a story about Germany, or for that matter Greece.

What is not in doubt, however, is how historically unprecedented these flows are. This final chart shows you total asylum inflows into the EU in recent years. You can see a slight dip down in the winter months, although bear in mind that the numbers for recent months are quite provisional at present, and subject to quite hefty revisions.