Switzerland expects asylum seeker numbers to fall again in 2025

Federal government expects asylum numbers to fall again this year Keystone-SDA

The State Secretariat for Migration expects around 24,000 new asylum applications in Switzerland this year - around 4,000 fewer than in 2024.

+ Get the most important news from Switzerland in your inbox

The federal government expects the number of pending asylum applications to continue to fall significantly by the end of this year.

According to the State Secretariat for Migration (SEM), there is a 60% probability that between 21,000 and 27,000 asylum applications will be submitted this year. If there are around 24,000 applications, this would be just under 4,000 applications or almost 15% fewer than in 2024.

+ Asylum in Switzerland

A second scenario with a probability of around 30% assumes that 27,000 to 37,000 applications will be submitted. The least likely third scenario, with a probability of around 10%, anticipates 18,000 to 22,000 new asylum seekers.

Reduction in pending applications

According to a provisional evaluation by SEM, 27,740 asylum applications were submitted in Switzerland in 2024. This is 2,483 or around 8% fewer than in 2023 with 30,223 applications.

According to the migration authority, the main reasons for the decline were the lower asylum migration of Turkish, Afghan and Syrian nationals to Western Europe and significantly fewer landings in southern Italy.

SEM was able to reduce the number of pending asylum applications from around 16,000 to around 12,000 in 2024 despite the continued high number of new asylum applications, it added. Since 2022, around 300 additional full-time positions have been created to process asylum applications.

If the predicted further decline in the number of new asylum applications in 2025 materialises, SEM will be able to further reduce the pending cases significantly. Accordingly, all newly submitted applications should be processed in the course of 2026.

Translated from German by DeepL/mga

How we work

This news story has been written and carefully fact-checked by an external editorial team. At SWI swissinfo.ch we select the most relevant news for an international audience and use automatic translation tools such as DeepL to translate it into English. Providing you with automatically translated news gives us the time to write more in-depth articles.

If you want to know more about how we work, have a look here, if you want to learn more about how we use technology, click here, and if you have feedback on this news story please write to [e-mail].