Today, the Office of the Commissioner General for Refugees and Stateless Persons (CGRS) published its asylum figures for the month of February 2023. The CGRS highlighted inter alia that its backlog – that is to say the number of files for which the CGRS has not yet taken a decision – amounted to 18.390 cases concerning 21.618 persons at the end of the month.

In January 2023, the Commissioner General committed to “do everything possible to reduce the backlog in order to return to the situation where all applicants receive a decision within a short period of time”. Inter alia, the CGRS continued to invest in the recruitment of new staff.

However the number of files to be processed is increasing because the staff of the Immigration Office has also been increased and is therefore processing more files that are handed over to the CGRS. “During 2022, the Immigration Office transmitted an average of 2.127 files per month to the CGRS. Since the beginning of 2023, this number has risen to more than 3.400 per month. But the new staff of the CGRS is not yet fully operational as it must go through a training period” stated the CGRS spokesperson.

For additional information on the CGRS asylum figures for February 2023, please visit this page.
All CGRS figures are available here.