EU expects 3 million asylum seekers by 2017

BRUSSELS

The European Union said on Thursday that it expects three million asylum seekers to arrive in the 28-nation bloc by 2017.

The European Commission reported in its economic forecast that it expected one million asylum seekers this year, 1.5 million in 2016 and half a million in 2017.

Should half of the people arriving in the EU receive asylum, and if they are of working age, then they have the potential to increase the EU’s labor force by 0.1 percent this year and 0.3 percent in 2016 and 2017, according to the Commission.

The report comes one day after the Swedish government said it would send a request to the European Commission to arrange for migrants to be moved from the Scandinavian country to other EU member states.

A total of 160,000 asylum seekers are supposed to be distributed across the 28-nation bloc, mainly from the most affected countries such as Italy and Greece, to other EU member states.

However, EU member states have so far only relocated 116 refugees of the 160,000, the European Commission reported on Tuesday.