The 2023 statistical asylum report, entitled Applicants and beneficiaries of international protection in Portugal, was published by Catarina Reis Oliveira, director of the Migration Observatory and scientific coordinator of the 'Immigration in Numbers' collection.

The report comprises 4 chapters: 1) International protection in the world and in the European Union: Portugal compared, 2) Requests for international protection to Portugal, 3) Reception of applicants and beneficiaries of international protection, and 4) Integration and autonomy of beneficiaries of international protection in Portugal.

The main conclusions of the report are as follows:

• Portugal is not among the main destinations for international protection in the world or in Europe: of the 27.1 million refugees in the world in 2021, only 2.9 million (13.4%) were in European Union (EU) countries, with only 0.1% of these in Portugal. Among the 27 countries in the EU, Portugal comes twentieth in terms of highest number of refugees hosted.
• In 2022, Portugal was one of the countries with the highest protection granting rate: for every 100 asylum decisions issued, 78 were positive.
• In 2022, Portugal hosted the second-highest number of people displaced from Ukraine without Ukrainian citizenship in the EU, after Germany.
• The majority of those displaced from Ukraine and hosted by Portugal in 2022 were given an NHS number (93.4%), social security number (89.4%) and tax payer number (83.5%). A diverse range of support was offered, including vaccination, social support, housing support, access to education, learning Portuguese, and employment.
• It is estimated that around one third (32.1%) of all beneficiaries of international protection in Portugal are independent in terms of social protection, and are tax payers in Portugal.
• In 2022, Portugal had the fifth-highest rate among EU countries of withdrawal of pending asylum applications (63%).