A million people sought EU asylum this year

One in four asylum seekers to the EU are Syrian refugees, with Germany receiving by far the highest number of claims, it emerged on Thursday.

More than a million people have sought asylum in the EU so far this year, and a quarter of them have been Syrian, according to new figures from Eurostat.

The actual figure, however, will be higher - as only Finland has provided figures for November.

So far this year there have been 60 percent more asylum applications than in all of 2014

So far this year there have been 60 percent more asylum applications than in all of 2014. This is also significantly higher than in 2008-13, when an average of 320,000 applications were made each year.

The statistics show that since the beginning of 2015 until the end of November, at least 1,001,910 applications were registered in the 28 EU member states. Of these, 90 percent were first time applicants.

Some 25 percent of those applying for asylum were from Syria, with 12 percent from Afghanistan and nine percent from Iraq.

Germany has received 340,000 asylum applications, more than a third of those recorded across the EU, the highest number of applicants of any EU country.

States such as Greece, Italy and Hungary have come under immense strain due to the influx of people.

Hungary has received 18 percent of all applicants, the second-highest of all EU countries.

The EU has also been divided over the best way to deal with the situation, which has been described as the worst refugee crisis since the Second World War.

The last highest number of asylum applications received by the EU was 675,025 in 1992 after the break up of Yugoslavia, said the UK's Guardian newspaper.

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