Number of regularisations plummets

Belgian Secretary of State for Asylum and Migration Theo Francken has welcomed the figures. He told newsmen: "If too many people are regularised then it means your policy is not working."

"Regularisation must always be an exception. Having this possibility in law means there is a loophole in the law."

In 2013 the number of people who were regularised halved and this was also the case in 2014.

Undocumented people can be regularised on two grounds: medical and humanitarian reasons. It's in the latter category that the greatest fall has been recorded. The number of regularisations on medical grounds rose in comparison with 2013.

Mr Francken has identified three reasons for the fall: the regularisation procedure has been shortened; there has been a change in the migrants' countries of provenance; and the backlog of the past has largely been dealt with.

As for provenance: most applications used to come from economic migrants from the Balkans; today migration flows are dominated by refugees from Iraq, Syria and Afghanistan. People who come from war zones have a right to asylum and do not need to apply for a regularisation.