Foreign citizens living in the EU Member States Foreign citizens accounted for fewer than 7% of persons living in the EU Member States in 2014. Over 40% of them were citizens of another EU Member State, according to data released by Eurostat today.

Based on 2011 Census data in Malta, the top 5 citizenships of foreigners living in Malta, 1 January 2014, were – United Kingdom 6 652 or 33%, Somalia 1 041 or 5%, Italy 947 or 5%, Bulgaria 850 or 4% and Germany 736 or 4%.

Th resident population in Malta by broad group of citizenship, at 1 January 2014 was 425 384, of which 94.1% were National Citizens, 5.9% were foreign citizens, 3.2% were from another EU country, and 2.7% were non-EU citizens.

On 1st of January 2014, the Member States of the European Union (EU) had 506.8 million residents, of which 472.8 million were nationals (citizens of the reporting country) and 34.1 million foreign citizens, this latter group consisting of 14.3 million citizens of another Member State and 19.8 million non-EU citizens.

Eurostat pointed out that persons who acquire citizenship in a Member State are no longer counted as foreign citizens in that country.

On the occasion of today's International Migrants' Day, Eurostat, the statistical office of the European Union, publishes a small selection of data on foreign citizens living in the EU Member States. A larger range of data broken down by country of citizenship as well as by country of birth is also available in the Eurostat database.

Across Member States, the highest proportion of foreign citizens in the total resident population was recorded in Luxembourg (45.3%), where almost half of the population did not have Luxembourgish citizenship. Shares above 10% were also registered in Cyprus (19.5%), Latvia (15.2%), Estonia (14.9%), Austria (12.5%), Ireland (11.8%), Belgium (11.3%) and Spain (10.1%).

In contrast, Poland (0.3%), Romania (0.4%), Croatia, Lithuania and Bulgaria (all 0.8%) all registered shares of foreign citizens below 1%. In total, foreign citizens made up 6.7% of the resident population of the EU Member States at 1st January 2014.

In thirteen Member States, there were clearly more non-EU citizens than EU citizens in the foreign population, while in ten the situation was more balanced, with between 40% and 60% of both non-EU and EU citizens. Belgium, Ireland, Cyprus, Luxembourg and Slovakia were the only five Member States where there were clearly fewer citizens of non-EU countries than citizens of another Member State.

Overall in the EU, non-EU citizens (19.8 million persons) represented 58% of the total foreign population, while citizens of another EU Member State (14.3 million persons) made up 42%.

Looking at the individual citizenships of the foreign resident population, diversity prevails with around 50 different nationalities among the top 5 in Member States. However, it should be noted that the largest group of foreign residents in each Member State of the EU is generally composed of citizens of another EU Member States and/or of a neighbouring country.

For EU citizens residing in another Member State, Polish citizens were registered among the five main citizenships of foreigners in 10 Member States, Germans in 9 and Italians and Romanians in 8 each. For non-EU citizens, Ukrainians were among the five main citizenships of foreigners in 9 Member States, Turks and Russians in 7 each.

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