Fewer family members have come to join refugees with a residency permit over the past three months, national statistics office CBS said on Thursday.

In the second quarter of this year, 4,095 family members moved to the Netherlands, but their number fell 45% to 2,260 in the third quarter, the CBS said.

At the same time, the number of new asylum seekers applying for residency status rose 14% to 4,385. It is the first time that more applications were made by new arrivals than family members, the CBS said.

In particular, fewer Syrians came to the Netherlands to join a family member with refugee status in the three months to end-September. Their number fell by more than half to 1,260.

Eritreans and Iraqis accounted for the second and third biggest groups of new arrivals.

The CBS bases its report on figures from the IND immigration service.