In 2011, the largest numbers of foreign citizens were recorded in Germany (7.2 million persons or 9% of the total population), Spain (5.7 million or 12%), Italy (4.6 million or 8%), the United Kingdom (4.5 million or 7%) and France (3.8 million or 6%). In total, more than 75% of the foreign citizens in the EU27 lived in these five Member States.
Among the EU27 Member States, the highest proportion of foreign citizens in the population was observed in Luxembourg (43% of the total population), followed by Cyprus (20%), Latvia (17%) and Estonia (16%). The percentage of foreign citizens was less than 2% in Poland, Bulgaria, Lithuania and Slovakia.
Focusing on EU citizens, Luxembourg recorded the highest proportion of foreign EU citizens (37% of the total population), followed by Cyprus (13%), Belgium and Ireland (both 7%), Spain (5%) and Austria (4%).
Nearly 50 million foreign-born people lived in the EU Member States in 2011
Data on foreign citizens provide useful information on the part of the population with a foreign background. However, since citizenship can change over time, it is interesting to complement this information with data on the foreign-born population. This provides supplementary information as it includes foreign citizens who have acquired the citizenship of the country of residence, but who were born abroad. It also includes nationals born abroad (for example in the territory of a former colony) or nationals born in a part of a state which, due to dissolution or border changes, no longer belongs to the same country.
In 2011, there were 48.9 million foreign-born people living in the EU27 Member States, with 16.5 million born in another Member State than the one in which they live (3.3% of the EU population) and 32.4 million born in a country outside the EU27 (6.4% of the EU population). In total, foreign-born people accounted for 9.7% of the total population of the EU27. The number of foreign-born people exceeded the number of foreign citizens in almost all Member States.
