VALLETTA, April 25 (Xinhua) -- Malta approved 660 asylum applications during 2018, double the European Union (EU) average in terms of per million population rate, figures released by Eurostat on Thursday showed.

According to Eurostat, the EU approved granted protection to 333,355 asylum seekers in 2018, which represent a portion of 650 per million of population, while Malta's asylum rate works out to 1,385 per million.

The number of applications in the EU had decreased by almost 40 percent from 2017.

The largest groups of beneficiaries of protection status in the EU during 2018 remained Syrians, followed by Afghans and Iranians.

The majority of asylum seekers granted protection in Malta were Syrians too, followed by Libyans and Eritreans.

Malta granted 160 people refugee status, and gave 480 people subsidiary protection, while approved 25 people application for humanitarian reasons.

Germany granted protection to the highest number of asylum seekers with 139,600, ahead of Italy and France.

In addition to these, the EU member states received over 24,800 resettled refugees during 2018, while no refugees were resettled to Malta.