The number of foreign nationals residing in Malta fell by over 1,400 last year compared to 2009, according to new statistics issued by Eurostat.
At the same time, the number of births is also going down, contrary to the prevailing situation in the rest of the EU.
According to the EU’s statistics arm, last year there were 16,700 foreign residents in Malta amounting to four per cent of the population. The majority, 11,300 were non-EU citizens and included thousands of sub-Saharan Africans granted asylum status. On the other hand, the number of EU citizens residing on the island fell when compared to 2009, to just 5,400 last year.
Eurostat said it is estimated there were 32 million “foreigners” residing the EU in 2010, 12.3 million being EU citizens.
Germany, the largest EU member state, hosts the biggest number – 7.1 million, followed by Spain (5.7 million), the UK (4.4 million) and Italy (4.2 million).
When compared to the size of the population, Luxembourg hosts by far the largest proportion of foreign nationals, amounting to 43 per cent of its total population.
In contrast with the growing increase of Europe’s fertility rate, Malta, together with Luxembourg and Portugal, were the only member states registering a drop in births in the past five years.
On average, the EU’s fertility rate in 2009 stood at 1.6 per woman, an increase from 1.47 registered in 2003. However, the fertility rate for Maltese women dropped to 1.44 from 1.48 per Maltese woman in 2003.
Meanwhile, Malta had better life expectancy rates than the EU average in 2009.
Maltese women now are expected to live until 82.7 years, the same as the EU average, while Maltese men’s average life expectancy stands at 77.8 years, more than a year longer than the EU average which in 2009 stood at 76.4 years.
Eurostat said that over the last 50 years, life expectancy at birth in the EU27 has increased by around 10 years for both women and men.
The life expectancy at birth rose in all member states, with the largest increases for both women and men recorded in Estonia and Slovenia.
In 2009, the highest life expectancies at birth for women were observed in France (85.1), Spain (84.9), Italy (84.5) and Cyprus (83.6), and for men in Sweden (79.4), Italy (79.1 in 2008), Spain and The Netherlands (both 78.7).