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Number of asylum applications in Austria not to exceed upper limit in 2016: ministry

Xinhua, December 14, 2016 Adjust font size:

The number of asylum applications in Austria will not exceed the upper limit the country set for this year, the Interior Ministry said on Tuesday.

Austria accepted nearly 33,000 asylum applications by the end of November this year, falling short of the limit of 37,500 applications the country set for the whole year, Austria Press Agency has reported.

So far, Austria received a total of 39,618 asylum applications, of which 23,561 were being processed. Another 8,734 applications were sent in 2015 but were not processed until this year.

Had the upper limit been surpassed, the government would have made the application process more difficult.

The upper limit for asylum applications in 2017 is to be reduced to 35,000, according to the report.

The Austrian government denied 16,057 applications this year, the majority of which were done as per the Dublin Regulation, which determines all EU member states are responsible to check an asylum seekers' application seeking international protection.

In the first 11 months of the year, 9,755 persons were ordered to depart from the country, according to the Interior Ministry. Endit