Eurostat, the EU statistics office, said today that 5.9% persons who live in Malta are foreigners, of whom 3.2% (of the total) are citizens of other EU states and 2.7% are non-EU citizens.

As of January 1,2014, the EU had had 506.8 million residents, of whom 472.8 million were nationals and 34.1 million foreign citizens. This latter group consisted of 14.3 million citizens of another member state and 19.8 million non-EU citizens.

Across member sStates, the highest proportion of foreign citizens in the total resident population was recorded in Luxembourg (45.3%), where almost half of the population did not have Luxembourgish citizenship. Shares above 10% were also registered in Cyprus (19.5%), Latvia (15.2%), Estonia (14.9%), Austria (12.5%), Ireland (11.8%), Belgium (11.3%) and Spain (10.1%).  

In thirteen Member States, there were clearly more non-EU citizens than EU citizens in the foreign population, while in ten the situation was more balanced, with between 40% and 60% of both non-EU and EU citizens.

Belgium, Ireland, Cyprus, Luxembourg and Slovakia were the only five Member States where there were fewer citizens of non-EU countries than citizens of another Member State.