Migration and Migrant Population Statistics

Abstract

On 1 January 2013 the foreign population of the EU-27 was 20.4 million while the foreign-born population was 33.5 million The EU-27 foreign population (people residing in an EU-27 Member State with citizenship of a non-member country) on 1 January 2013 was 20.4 million, representing 4.1 % of the EU-27 population. In addition, there were 13.7 million persons living in an EU-27 Member State on 1 January 2013 with the citizenship of another EU-27 Member State. There were 33.5 million people born outside of the EU-27 living in an EU-27 Member State on 1 January 2013, while there were 17.3 million persons who had been born in a different EU-27 Member State from their country of residence. Only in Ireland, Hungary, Luxembourg, Slovakia and Cyprus was the number of persons born in other EU-27 Member States higher than the number born outside of the EU-27 (in other words in non-member countries). People born abroad outnumbered foreign citizens in all of the EU-27 Member States, except Latvia, the Czech Republic and Luxembourg. In absolute terms, the largest numbers of non-nationals living in the EU on 1 January 2013 were found in Germany (7.7 million persons), Spain (5.1 million), the United Kingdom (4.9 million), Italy (4.4 million) and France (4.1 million). Non-nationals in these five EU Member States collectively represented 77 % of the total number of non-nationals living in the EU-27, while the same five Member States had a 63 % share of the EU’s population. In relative terms, the EU-27 Member State with the highest share of non-nationals was Luxembourg, as they accounted for 44 % of the total population. A high proportion of non-nationals (10 % or more of the resident population) was also observed in Cyprus, Latvia, Estonia, Ireland, Austria, Belgium and Spain. In most EU Member States, the majority of non-nationals are citizens of non-member countries (see Table 4). The opposite is true only for Luxembourg, Slovakia, Ireland, Cyprus, Belgium, Malta, Hungary and the Netherlands. In the case of Latvia and Estonia, the proportion of citizens from non-member countries is particularly large due to the high number of recognised non-citizens (mainly former Soviet Union citizens, who are permanently resident in these countries but have not acquired any other citizenship). Table 5 presents a summary of the five main citizenships and countries of birth for the EU-27 and EFTA Member States for which detailed data are available. An analysis of the age structure of the population shows that, for the EU-27 as a whole, the foreign population was younger than the national population. The distribution by age for foreigners shows, compared with that for nationals, a greater proportion of relatively young working age adults. In 2012, the median age of the national population in the EU-27 was 43 years, while the median age of foreigners living in the EU was 35 years.