Eurostat: One million Albanians living in EU-27

TIRANA, September 8 – Albanians are one of the ten most numerous groups of foreign citizens resident in EU member states, accounting for 3.2 percent of the EU total foreign population, a report issued by Eurostat has shown.
The EU’s statistical office ranked Albania as the sixth biggest foreign community resident in the EU 27 with around 1 million people.
Among the citizens of countries outside the EU27, the largest groups were from Turkey (2.4 million or 8% of the total number of foreign citizens in the EU27), Morocco (1.8 million or 6%) and Albania (1.0 million or 3%).
In 2009, 37% of the foreign citizens living in the EU27 were citizens of another EU27 Member State. The largest groups were from Romania (2.0 million or 6% of the total number of foreign citizens in the EU27), Poland (1.5 million or 5%), Italy (1.3 million or 4%) and Portugal (1.0 million or 3%), Eurostat said in a statement.
Among the non-EU foreign population living in the European Union in 2009, 48.2% have citizenship of a High Human Development Index (HDI) country (with Turkey, Albania and Russia accounting for almost half) and 44.4% are citizens of a Medium HDI country (one fifth of whom are citizens of Morocco, followed by nationals of China and Ukraine).
At continent level, the largest proportion (7.2 million) of non-EU foreigners are citizens of a European country, of whom more than half are citizens of Turkey, Albania or Ukraine.
On 1 January 2009, 31.9 million foreign citizens lived in the EU27 Member States, of which 11.9 million were citizens of another EU27 Member State. The remaining were citizens of countries outside the EU27, in particular from other European countries (7.2 million), Africa (4.9 million), Asia (4.0 million) and the American continent (3.3 million). Foreign citizens accounted for 6.4% of the total EU27 population.
However, the number of Albanian residents living in the EU-27 is believed to be far bigger as more than 1 million Albanians live and work only in Greece and Italy.