[size=75:ruury2ti]Sofia echo 16 December 2009

About 24 000 foreigners living in Bulgaria – Eurostat

There are about 24 000 foreigners living in Bulgaria, making up 0.3 per cent of the country’s population, according to a new report by the EU’s statistical office Eurostat.

The report, released on December 16 2009, says that by far most of the foreigners living in Bulgaria are from countries outside the EU.

The three largest groups of foreigners in Bulgaria are Russians (9000, or 36.7 per cent of all foreigners in the country), Ukrainians (2200, or 8.8 per cent) and Greeks (1600, 6.6 per cent).

Eurostat said that as at January 1 2008, 30.8 million foreign citizens were living in the 27 EU member states, of which 11.3 million were citizens of another EU member state.

The remaining 19.5 million were citizens of countries outside the EU27, of which six million were citizens of other European countries, 4.7 million from Africa, 3.7 million of Asia and 3.2 million from the American continent.

Foreign citizens accounted for 6.2 per cent of the total EU27 population.

The Eurostat media statement, issued ahead of International Migrants Day on December 18 2009, is based on a report by Eurostat on foreign citizens in EU member states, Norway and Switzerland.

The report presents data either supplied by National Statistical Institutes, or approved by them if estimated by Eurostat.

The proportion of foreign citizens varied between 0.1 per cent in Romania and 43 per cent in Luxembourg

In 2008, the largest numbers of foreign citizens were recorded in Germany (7.3 million people), Spain (5.3 million), the United Kingdom (four million), France (3.7 million) and Italy (3.4 million). More than 75 per cent of the foreign citizens in the EU27 lived in these member states.

Among EU member states, the highest percentage of foreign citizens in the population was in Luxembourg (43 per cent of the total population), followed by Latvia (18 per cent), Estonia (17 per cent), Cyprus (16 per cent), Ireland (13 per cent), Spain (12 per cent) and Austria (10 per cent).

Similarly to Bulgaria, the percentage of foreign citizens in Romania, Poland and Slovakia was less than one per cent.

In 2008, 37 per cent of the foreign citizens living in the EU27 were citizens of another EU member state.

The largest groups were from Romania (1.7 million or 15 per cent of the total number of foreign citizens from another EU member state), Italy (1.3 million or 11 per cent) and Poland (1.2 million or 11 per cent).

Among the citizens of countries outside the EU27, the largest groups were from Turkey (2.4 million or 12 per cent of the total number of foreign citizens from countries outside the EU27), Morocco (1.7 million or nine per cent) and Albania (one million or five per cent).

The origin of the population of foreign citizens varied greatly among EU members.

In six member states, the largest single group of foreign citizens accounted for more than 30 per cent of the total foreign population.

The member states with the highest percentage of foreign citizens from one single country were Greece (64 per cent of foreign citizens were from Albania ), Slovenia (47 per cent from Bosnia and Herzegovina ), Hungary (37 per cent from Romania ) and Luxembourg (37 per cent from Portugal ).

It's interesting to see that the Brits are not even in the top 3 which has shocked me, I seem to get the impression from another forum that Bulgaria is practically owned by the Brits anyway joking aside it's still a shock