BERN (Sputnik) — Switzerland is expecting a record of 30,000 asylum requests by year-end, a senior migration official said on Monday.
"The final data for the 2015 records is not available, but we have already received some 29,000 asylum requests, so, by the end of the year we expect over 30,000 applications. This is a record figure," an official in the Swiss State Secretariat for Migration, Martin Oberholzer, told reporters.
Europe has been struggling to cope with a surging stream of refugees and asylum seekers from the Middle East and North Africa. Despite not being part of the European Union, Switzerland agreed to take part in the EU quota scheme to relocate 160,000 refugees, volunteering to accept some 1,500 refugees.
In October, Swiss lawmaker Luc Recordon told Sputnik that Switzerland is capable of receiving additional refugees due to its economic well-being, stability and low unemployment relative to other countries.
