6.5% of the EU population are foreigners and 9.4% are born abroad

This issue presents the latest available figures on the foreign and foreign-born population usually resident in the EU-27 and EFTA countries as at 1 January 2010. In 2010 there were 32.5 million foreigners in the EU-27, corresponding to 6.5% of the total population. The majority of them, 20.2 million, were third-country nationals (i.e. citizens of non-EU countries), while the remaining 12.3 million were citizens of another Member State. Only in Luxembourg, Ireland, Belgium, Cyprus, Slovakia and Hungary were there more citizens of other EU countries than third-country nationals.

Due to better data availability, information on citizenship has often been used to study populations with a foreign background. However, since citizenship can change over time, many data users prefer information by country of birth. There were 47.3 million foreign-born residents in the EU in 2010, corresponding to 9.4% of the total population. Of these, 31.4 million were born outside the EU and 16.0 million were born in another EU Member State. Only in Luxembourg, Ireland and Hungary were foreign-born from other EU countries more numerous than those born outside the EU. People born abroad outnumbered foreigners in all Member States, except in Luxembourg, Latvia and the Czech Republic.