The Netherlands received 13 refugees for every 10,000 people in the population at large last year, according to calculations by the national statistics office CBS.

This is slightly above the European average of 11 refugees per 10,000 population. Sweden tops the list with 78 refugees per 10,000, followed by Hungary (42) and Austria (33).

The CBS bases its calculations on figures from the European statistics agency Eurostat.

The European Commission wants to spread refugees more fairly around the 28 EU member states and is to publish plans for achieving this in the coming week.

Eurostat says 562,000 refugees came to Europe last year, of whom 173,000 went to Germany, 75,000 to Sweden and 64,000 to Italy. However, former central and eastern European countries, as well as Portugal, absorbed very few refugees

The Eurostat figures published by the CBS on Saturday state 22,000 refugees applied for asylum in the Netherlands last year, more than double the 2013 figure of 10,000.

In January, the CBS said almost 24,000 refugees had come to the Netherlands in 2014. That figure was based on its own statistics and those of the IND immigration service.