Bulgaria in EU Bottom by Number of Foreign Residents

In 2009, 23 800 foreign citizens lived in Bulgaria, which is just 0.3% of the country's aging population. File photo

On 1 January 2009, 31.9 million foreign citizens lived in the 27 EU Member States, of which 11.9 million were citizens of another EU Member State, according to data released by Eurostat, the statistical office of the European Union Tuesday.

The remaining 20 million were citizens of countries outside the EU – 7.2 million from other European countries, 4.9 million from Africa, 4 million from Asia, and 3.3 million from the Americas.

In 2009, foreign citizens accounted for 6.4% of the total EU population, but the proportion of foreign citizens varied between less than 1% in Poland, Romania and Bulgaria and 44% in Luxembourg.

In 2009, 23 800 foreign citizens lived in Bulgaria, which is just 0.3% of the population. Of them 3 500 were from other EU Member States and the rest were from countries outside the EU.

The Eurostat report involves foreign citizens in the EU Member States, EFTA and Candidate countries.

In 2009, the largest numbers of foreign citizens were recorded in Germany (7.2 million), Spain (5.7 million), the United Kingdom (4.0 million in 2008), Italy (3.9 million) and France (3.7 million). More than 75% of the foreign citizens in the EU lived in these 5 Member States.

Among the EU Member States, the highest percentage of foreign citizens in the population was observed in Luxembourg (44% of the total population), followed by Latvia (18%), Cyprus and Estonia (both 16%), Spain (12%), Ireland (11%) and Austria (10%). The percentage of foreign citizens was 1% or less in Poland, Romania, Bulgaria and Slovakia.

In 2009, 37% of the foreign citizens living in the EU were citizens of another EU Member State. The largest groups were from Romania (2.0 million or 6% of the total number of foreign citizens in the EU), Poland (1.5 million or 5%), Italy (1.3 million or 4%) and Portugal (1.0 million or 3%). Among the citizens of countries outside the EU, the largest groups were from Turkey (2.4 million or 8% of the total number of foreign citizens in the EU), Morocco (1.8 million or 6%) and Albania (1.0 million or 3%).

On average in 2009, foreign citizens living in the EU were significantly younger than the population of nationals (median age 34.3 years compared with 41.2 years). This was true in all Member States except Estonia, Latvia and Poland. The largest differences were recorded in Italy (32.3 compared with 43.9), Finland (33.0 compared with 42.1) and Denmark (32.1 compared with 41.0).

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