Foreigners living in the EU are diverse and largely younger than the nationals of the EU Member States

Migration plays a significant role in the population dynamics and population composition of European societies. Therefore studying the composition and the demographics of the foreign and foreign-born population is important as these represent a significant part of the EU population. The total number of non-nationals living on the territory of the EU Member States on 1 January 2009 was 31.9 million, representing 6.4% of the total EU population. More than one third of them (11.9 million), were citizens of another Member State. Detailed analysis of the current age structure of nationals and non-nationals separately reveals that non-nationals bring a younger population to the EU. This issue presents the latest available figures on the non-national and foreign-born population usually resident in the EU, EFTA and Candidate countries on 1 January 2009, broken down by citizenship and country of birth respectively.