Some 290,000 people applied for asylum in the EU, Iceland, Liechtenstein, Norway and Switzerland in the first five months of this year, the European Asylum Support Office, an EU agency said Monday. The figure was 11 percent higher than in the same period in 2018, but far lower than the 1.4m people who applied in 2015. Fresh Venezuelan applications (18,400) helped to make Spain a popular destination country in 2019.
