The number of foreigners making Malta their home last year dropped by 1,400 when compared to the previous year, mainly due to the departure of many EU nationals.

The decrease of foreign residents on the island would have been even bigger if not for a rise in the number of non-Europeans living on the island.

According to new statistics published in Brussels, in 2010, there were 16,700 foreigners living in Malta, four per cent of the population. The majority, 11,300, were non-EU citizens. No details were given on the origin of the 11,300 non-Europeans living on the island although these include thousands of immigrants from sub-Saharan Africa stranded on the island with nowhere to go.

According to Eurostat, the number of EU citizens living in Malta last year fell by 2,800 compared to 2009 and the number of non-Europeans increased by 1,400

Compared to the EU, the number of foreign residents in Malta is on the low side. At four per cent, Malta’s foreign segment of its population is lower than the 6.5 per cent average in the EU. Only a few other countries have a lower foreign population than Malta. These include Poland (0.1 per cent), Lithuania (1.1 per cent), Slovakia (1.2 per cent), Hungary (two per cent) and Finland (2.9 per cent).

On the other hand, Luxembourg, the second smallest member state in the EU following Malta, has a foreign population of 43 per cent – the highest in the EU.

On a general level, Eurostat’s new data shows that in 2010 there were 32.5 million individuals living in EU countries of which they were not citizens. The majority of them, 20.2 million, were third-country nationals – citizens of non-EU countries –and the rest citizens of another EU member state.Only in Luxembourg, Ireland, Belgium, Cyprus, Slovakia and Hungary were there more citizens of other EU countries than third-country nationals.

More than 75 per cent of the foreigners in the EU resided in five member states: Germany, Spain, the UK, Italy and France.

Citizens of Turkey and Romania were the most numerous among foreigners in the EU, exceeding two million people per country. Among the other EU nationals living outside their country of citizenship, Poles and Italians ranked second and third, each with more than one million citizens living in another member state.

Among the non-EU foreigners, citizens of Morocco and Albania followed those of Turkey.

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