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EUROPEAN UNION

IN NUMBERS: How many non-EU citizens live in European Union countries?

What percentage of the European Union's population are non-EU residents and which countries have the highest numbers of residents from outside the EU? New figures reveal all.

Published: 19 April 2022 14:43 CEST
IN NUMBERS: How many non-EU citizens live in European Union countries?
European Union flags are seen outside the European Council's building in Brussels on March 17, 2022. (Photo by Kenzo TRIBOUILLARD / AFP)

In 2021, 23.7 million non-EU citizens were living in EU countries, making up 5.3 percent of the total EU population, according to the European statistical office Eurostat.

This number now includes about a million UK citizens, which is no longer an EU member. In comparison, some 13.7 million EU citizens live in an EU state other than their own.

In relation to the national population, citizens from countries that are not part of the EU represent the majority of non-nationals in most EU states.

Eurostat reports that “in absolute terms, the largest numbers of non-nationals living in the EU Member States were found in Germany (10.6 million people), Spain (5.4 million), France and Italy (both 5.2 million). Non-nationals in these four Member States collectively represented 70.3 percent of the total number of non-nationals living in all EU Member States.”  

Only in Luxembourg, Cyprus, Austria, Belgium, Ireland, the Netherlands and Slovakia the majority of non-nationals are other EU citizens. In Luxembourg, 47 percent of the population is made of non-nationals)

How many non-EU nationals live in the EU? Source: Eurostat

In relative terms, the EU member states with the highest share of non-EU residents were Estonia (14%), Latvia (13%), Malta (12%), Luxembourg (9%), Austria, Cyprus and Spain (8%), Germany, Greece, Slovenia and Sweden (7%), France, Ireland, Italy and Sweden (6%).

In Switzerland the proportion is 9 percent and in Norway 4 percent, but in both these non-EU states, the majority of foreign residents are EU citizens (16% and 7% of the total population respectively).

Based on data provided by Eurostat, the most common non-EU nationalities in the countries covered by The Local are:

Austria: Serbia (1.4%)

Denmark: Syria (0.6%)

France: Algeria and Morocco (0.9%)

Germany: Turkey (1.6%)

Italy: Albania and Morocco (0.7%)

Norway: Syria (0.6%)

Spain: Morocco (1.6%)

Sweden: Syria (0.9%)

Switzerland: Turkey and North Macedonia (0.8%)

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INTERVIEW

‘A noticeable change’: What Denmark’s plans to change family reunion rules mean

Olivia Scott, chair of the campaign group Marriage Without Borders, tells The Local that while the Danish government's plans to make it easier to bring a foreign spouse to the country are welcome, they don't go nearly far enough.

Published: 3 May 2024 17:12 CEST
'A noticeable change': What Denmark's plans to change family reunion rules mean

Scott, a Dane who is married to an American, told The Local that her organisation, Ægteskab Uden Grænser, had mixed views about the bill, which will give Danish international executives the same rights to bring a foreign wife to Denmark as foreign executives, halve the bank guarantee or bankgaranti those bringing a spouse to Denmark have to leave for their local municipality, and reduce language requirements for the Danish partner. 

“For some it will make a noticeable change,” she said of the bank guarantee change, “because it is going from being around 114,000 kroner to 57,000 kroner which is much more digestible, especially for younger people, so of course that’s welcome. But we just don’t think it should be there at all.”

As municipalities almost never draw funds from the deposits to support spouses who have come to Denmark, the system, she said, was actually costing them more in adminstration fees than they were gaining from it. “So it ends up becoming a cost for our municipalities and for our government, instead of serving the purpose it’s supposed to serve.” 

READ ALSO: What’s in the new law on bringing a foreign spouse to Denmark?

As for the plan to allow Danish executives returning to Denmark for work to bring a foreign wife and family under the same rules as apply to foreign executives, she said this followed a pattern in Denmark where only so called mønsterborgere, or “outstanding citizens” were welcome to bring spouses to the country. 

“Yes, there are some people that will benefit from this, and we’re always happy when there are regulations that change for the better,” she said. “But this is still just a small group.” 

Olivia Scott is chair of Marriage without Fronteirs. Photo: private

She said the attention being given to Danish executives in the bill simply served to emphasise the gap in the way regular Danes and “highly educated Danes with a lot of money” are seen by the government. 

“That this regulation is making it easier for highly educated individuals with good jobs, is, again, confirming this premise that it is only ‘outstanding citizens’ that we feel should be able to enjoy the ability to be family unified,” she said. 

The third part of the new law, which alters the language requirements for the Danish partner was, she said, welcome, as many Danes who wanted to bring a spouse to Denmark were being foreced to take a Danish exam to prove their ability to speak their own native language.  

“There has been a group of elderly gentleman that simply do not have the physical documentation that they passed their ninth grade. It’s called the afgangseksamen. It’s a physical document that they have lost over the last couple of decades, and so they have had to go and take a Danish test to certify their level of Danish, which is ridiculous because they’re Danish and they’ve lived and studying here their whole life.”

As for the final bit of the new bill, which will block spousal reunions if either the Dane or their partner has been charged or is under prosecution for a crime, Scott said Marriage without Borders supported the idea that someone who has been sentenced for comitting a hard crime is limited in their ability to get family reunification.

“But maybe there should be consideration paid to how long ago the crime was committed,” she said. 

In addition, she said, there was little evidence that foreign spouses tended to commit crimes, so the change would have little impact. 

“If you go and you look at statistics on foreign spouses family reunified with Danish citizens, the crime rate is lower in this specific group than it is among regular ethnic Danes.” 

Finally, she said that even if the bill represented a step forward, her organisation intended to keep pushing for additional relaxations of Denmark’s draconian family reunification rules. 

“Obviously, we hope that it’s going to go further, but we as an organisation are not going to be happy until the day when the rules for family reunion according to Danish law are equalised with those under EU law,” she said. “We cannot accept that the under EU law, you can come to the country as long as you can financially support yourself, and you can obtain permanent residency in five years, whereas for Danish laws, you are locked-into sometimes decades of struggles for no reason.” 

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