The French Office for the Protection of Refugees and Stateless Persons OFPRA published its first annual asylum statistics for 2024. OFPRA reports nearly 153,600 submitted applications for international protection, all procedures combined, for 2024. These included 129,440 first applications.
Although this represents an increase of 7.7% compared to 2023, the level of applications to OFPRA does not reflect a downward trend observed at the one-stop shops in prefectures, where asylum applications must be registered before being sent to OFPRA. In fact, some of the applications submitted to OFPRA come from people who had registered their asylum application with the prefecture in previous years, but who were unable to lodge it because of the Dublin Regulation.
OFPRA reports that Afghanistan, despite a drop of almost a third, is still the main country of origin of asylum seekers, with almost 12,400 first applications.
Applicants from Ukraine, with more than 11,800 first applications, are mostly from people already in France under the temporary protection status, and are now the second biggest group of applicants, followed by Guinea (more than 10,300), the Democratic Republic of Congo (nearly 9,500) and Ivory Coast (more than 8,800). OFPRA reports a record level of activity, issuing almost 142,000 decisions in 2024 (compared with 136,811 in 2023). Its protection rate increased to almost 39% (+6 points compared with 2023). The average processing time has remained stable at 138 days (127 days in 2023), or around 4.5 months.