More than one in four people living in Cyprus were born abroad, making the island the EU’s third-highest member state by share of foreign-born population, according to data published by Eurostat.
The figures, based on data from 1 January 2025, show 27.6% of Cyprus residents were born outside the country, behind only Luxembourg (51.5%) and Malta (32.0%).
Across the EU, nearly 46.7 million of the bloc’s 450.6 million residents were born outside the union, accounting for 10.4% of the total population — an increase of 1.9 million compared with the previous year.
Germany hosted the largest number of foreign-born residents in absolute terms at 17.2 million, followed by France (9.6 million), Spain (9.5 million) and Italy (6.9 million). Ireland (23.3%), Austria (22.5%), Sweden (20.8%) and Germany (20.5%) also recorded high proportional shares.
At the other end of the scale, foreign-born residents made up less than 5% of the population in Poland (2.6%), Romania (3.6%), Bulgaria (3.8%) and Slovakia (4.0%).
Non-EU nationals
Around 30.6 million non-EU nationals lived in a member state on the same date, representing 6.8% of the bloc’s population — an increase of 1.6 million year on year. A further 14.1 million residents held citizenship of another EU country, up by 0.1 million.
Germany again recorded the highest number of foreign nationals in absolute terms (12.4 million), followed by Spain (6.9 million), France (6.5 million) and Italy (5.4 million). Those four countries accounted for 69.7% of all foreign nationals in the EU, while representing 57.8% of the bloc’s total population.
By proportion, Luxembourg had the highest share of foreign nationals at 47.0%, followed by Malta (29.4%) and Cyprus (24.8%). Poland (1.2%), Slovakia (1.2%), Romania (1.6%), Bulgaria (2.3%) and Hungary (2.7%) had the lowest shares.
EU citizens living in other member states
Luxembourg also recorded the largest share of citizens from other EU countries at 35.8%, followed by Cyprus (10.1%) and Austria (10.0%).
The smallest shares were found in Poland and Lithuania (0.1% each), Latvia (0.2%), Romania (0.3%), Bulgaria (0.5%), Croatia (0.6%), Slovakia (0.7%) and Hungary (0.9%).
In Estonia and Latvia, the share of non-EU nationals is notably high due to the large number of recognised non-citizens — mostly former Soviet Union citizens who reside permanently in those countries but have not acquired any other nationality.
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