Foreign residents double in 15 years

The number of foreigners residing in Malta has almost doubled in the past 15 years according to statistics issued by Eurostat, the EU's statistical arm.

In 2004, the number of foreigners residing in Malta amounted to almost three per cent of the population (2.8 per cent). The statistics show that this is almost twice the amount of foreign residents in 1990 when the percentage was only 1.6. The biggest group of non-Maltese living on the island in 2004 was composed of Britons.

The percentage of foreigners living in Malta is still lower than the average in the EU which currently stands at 5.5 per cent.

According to Eurostat, in 2004, Luxembourg, with 38.6 per cent, had by far the highest proportion of non-nationals with the biggest group being Portuguese. They are followed by Latvia, with 22.2 per cent of residents being Russian, and Estonia, with one fifth of its population being Russian.

The majority of non-nationals living in EU member states were citizens of non-EU countries. Turks, for example, are the biggest foreign resident groups in Denmark, Germany and the Netherlands.

At the same time, the proportion of non-nationals grew in almost all member states. The most significant increases between 1990 and 2004 were observed in Luxembourg (from 28.7 per cent to 38.6 per cent), Greece (from 1.4 per cent to 8.1 per cent), Spain (from one per cent to 6.6 per cent) and Cyprus (from 4.2 per cent in 1992 to 9.4 per cent in 2002).