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Here's what Europe's refugee crisis looks like in numbers

Sep 4, 2015, 18:00 IST

Europe is in the midst of a refugee crisis.

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Thousands of people are fleeing the Syrian civil war, now in its fifth year, as well as ISIS in parts of the Middle East, conflict in Sudan, and oppression in Eritrea ("Africa's North Korea").

Below is a picture of exactly how the crisis stacks up in numbers at the moment, looking at the number of pending asylum applications in each of the 28 European Union nations, as of June.

Eurostat/Business Insider
Eurostat/Business Insider

As you can see, Germany has by far the most asylum applications, almost double the next biggest figure in Hungary. (Scenes of clashes between police and refugees at Budapest's central railway have been running on TV for the last few days.)

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Germany is expecting as many as 800,000 refugees to arrive this year.

Despite a lot of rhetoric about the UK being flooded with asylum seekers, the UK has less than one-tenth of the number of applications as Germany and roughly the same number as the Netherlands.

The Financial Times also has a neat graphic that shows how the applications stack up when you compare the relative populations of each nation. When you cut the figures that way the UK doesn't rank much higher.

Sweden has the most pending applications - 5.7 per 100,000, compared to 0.5 per 100,000 for the UK. The European average is 1.1 per 100,000.

The flood of displaced people is causing a slow-motion tragedy, with horrific images of drowning children and families at risk of being torn apart.

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Germany and France have both called for Europe to install a quota system to ensure each country take in their fair share of refugees. They've both spoken of it as a "moral" responsibility, seen by many as a thinly veiled snipe at David Cameron.

Until today, Britain's government has been reluctant to commit to taking on more refugees (Cameron now says the UK will take "thousands more.")

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