Archive:EU citizenship - statistics on cross-border activities

Data from April 2013. Most recent data: Further Eurostat information, Main tables and Database.

Citizens of EU Member States (referred to here as EU citizens) enjoy a range of rights and freedoms making it easy to live and work in other Member States, to travel within the EU as tourists, visitors or on business, to study in other parts of the EU, and to readily make cross-border purchases within the EU single market. In many cases, some of these rights apply also to third country nationals (citizens of non-EU countries) who reside legally in the EU.
Using the latest available Eurostat data, this article looks briefly at the different ways in which EU citizens make use of these rights

Table, Figure or Map X: Full title of the Table, Figure or Map - Source: Eurostat (educ_ilang)

Main statistical findings

Text with Footnote ^[1]

13.6 million EU citizens live in an EU Member State other than their country of citizenship

In 2012, the population of the EU included 34.3 million foreign citizens, representing 6.8% of the total population (table 1). More than one third (13.6 million) of these people were citizens of another EU Member State. Foreign citizens are defined here as persons who do not hold the citizenship of their country of residence, regardless of whether they were born in the country or elsewhere.
As presented in Figure 1, Luxembourg was the EU Member State with the highest share of foreigners (43.8% of the total population). A high proportion of foreign citizens was also observed in Cyprus (20.1%), Latvia (16.3%) and Estonia (15.7%).
In most Member States, the majority of resident foreigners are third country nationals. At the beginning of 2012, only in Belgium, Ireland, Cyprus, Luxembourg, Hungary, Malta and Slovakia were there more citizens of other EU Member States 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, it is also useful to present information by country of birth.
There were 33.0 million people born outside a country of the EU-27 on 1 January 2012 and there were 17.2 million persons who were born in a different EU-27 Member State from the current country of residence. Only in Luxembourg, Ireland, Hungary, Cyprus and Malta did foreign-born persons from other EU-27 countries outnumber those born outside the EU-27. People born abroad outnumbered foreign citizens in all Member States, except Luxembourg, Latvia and the Czech Republic.

In 2011, 782 thousand people acquired citizenship of an EU Member State. Although the great majority of acquisitions were by people who were previously third country nationals, 82 thousands persons who were already citizens of one of the Member States acquired citizenship of another 27 Member State; this amounts to 10,5% of the total of persons acquiring citizenship. As can be seen on figure 2, mainly people with Romanian and Polish citizenships acquired another EU citizenship in 2011.

A majority of foreign workers are citizens of another EU country in ten Member States

In 2012, just over 15 million people employed in the EU were foreign citizens, corresponding to 7.1% of the total population in employment. 6.5 million (43.4% of employed foreigners) were citizens of another EU Member State, while 8.5 million (56.6%) were third country nationals. The share of foreign citizens as a proportion of the employed population varied greatly between Member States (figure 3). Luxembourg had the largest proportion of foreign citizens in employment (50.1% of the employed population), followed by Cyprus (23.2%), and then Ireland, Estonia, and Latvia, ranging from 14.9 % to 14.4 %.

In nine Member States the majority of employed foreigners were citizens of other EU Member States (figure 4). In order of magnitude, these were Luxembourg, Ireland, Belgium, Slovakia, Cyprus, Hungary, UK, Netherlands and Sweden.

A decrease in the number of trips to another EU Member State for personal purposes between 2008 and 2011

Although the statistics above refer to people who are living and working in another Member State, it is also useful to consider the far larger number of EU citizens who make temporary visits to other Member States. One of the basic principles of the EU is that of free movement. EU citizens may travel freely to other Member States, facilitating tourism, visits to friends and family, and business travel. It is important to note that the available statistics relate to visits made by EU residents rather than citizens of the Member States.
As shown in table 2, in 2011, EU residents undertook around 179 million trips of at least one night for holiday, tourism and other personal reasons in a Member State other than the country of residence. Approximately 28 million business visits of at least one night were also made to another Member State.

Data sources and availability

Context

Further Eurostat information

Publications

Title of the publication

Main tables

Title of top Main tables folder, see:

Title(s) of second level folder (if any)

Title(s) of third level folder (if any)

Database

Title of top Database folder, see:

Title(s) of second level folder (if any)

Title(s) of third level folder (if any)

Other information

Regulation 1737/2005 (generating url [http://eur-lex.europa.eu/LexUriServ/LexUriServ.do?uri=CELEX:32005R1737:EN:NOT Regulation 1737/2005]) of DD Month YYYY on ...
Directive 2003/86/EC (generating url [http://eur-lex.europa.eu/LexUriServ/LexUriServ.do?uri=CELEX:32003L0086:EN:NOT Directive 2003/86/EC]) of DD Month YYYY on ...
Commission Decision 2003/86/EC (generating url [http://eur-lex.europa.eu/LexUriServ/LexUriServ.do?uri=CELEX:32003D0086:EN:NOT Commission Decision 2003/86/EC]) of DD Month YYYY on ...

External links

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Notes

↑ Text of the footnote.

[[Category:<Population, Labour market, Education and training etc.?>|EU citizenship - statistics on cross-border activities]] [[Category:<Statistical article>|EU citizenship - statistics on cross-border activities]]

[1] Text of the footnote.

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