Nationality is a legal status, not a birthplace, not an ethnicity, and not necessarily a permanent condition. Someone can be born in Casablanca, hold Moroccan citizenship for thirty years, apply for and receive French citizenship, and from that point forward disappear entirely from every foreign-national statistic ever published about France, even though nothing about where they were born or how they grew up has changed.
Nationality Is Not Ethnicity, and It Is Not Country of Birth
Three separate facts routinely get collapsed into one in casual conversation. Nationality is a legal citizenship status, conferred by birth, descent, marriage, or naturalization, and it can change during a person’s lifetime. Country of birth is a fixed biographical fact that never changes, regardless of where someone later lives or which passport they hold. Ethnicity, where measured at all, is a separate self-identified category entirely distinct from both.
A Turkish-German engineer born in Germany to Turkish immigrant parents may hold German nationality by birth, count as native-born in country of birth statistics since Germany is where they were born, and identify ethnically as Turkish, German, or both, none of which the nationality statistics in this article can tell you.
Europe’s Population by Citizenship Status
| Category | Population, 1 January 2025 | Share of EU |
|---|---|---|
| EU citizens residing in their own country | remainder | approx 89.2% |
| Citizens of another EU country | 14.1 million | approx 3.1% |
| Non-EU citizens | 30.6 million | 6.8% |
| Total non-national residents | 44.7 million | approx 9.9% |
Source: Eurostat, EU population diversity by citizenship and country of birth, 1 January 2025, EU total population 450.6 million.
Just under 10 percent of everyone living in the EU holds a passport from a country other than the one they currently live in. That is a smaller share than the 14.4 percent foreign-born figure covered in the companion article on country of birth, because naturalization moves people out of the foreign-national count while leaving their birthplace unchanged, meaning nationality statistics always run somewhat lower than country of birth statistics in any population with active citizenship uptake.
Which Countries Have the Largest Foreign National Populations
| Rank | Country | Non-National Population 2025 | Share of All EU Non-Nationals |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Germany | 12.4 million | approx 28% |
| 2 | Spain | 6.9 million | approx 15% |
| 3 | France | 6.5 million | approx 15% |
| 4 | Italy | 5.4 million | approx 12% |
Source: Eurostat, EU population diversity by citizenship and country of birth, 1 January 2025, EU total population 450.6 million. These four countries hold 69.7% of every foreign national living in the EU, an even sharper concentration than the 66.7% share the same four countries hold of the EU’s foreign-born population, since these large economies also naturalize a smaller relative share of their long-term foreign-born residents than some smaller EU countries do.
Foreign National Share by Country
| Rank | Country | Non-National Share |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Luxembourg | 47.0% |
| 2 | Malta | 29.4% |
| 3 | Cyprus | 24.8% |
| Lowest Share | Country | Non-National Share |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Poland | 1.2% |
| 1 | Slovakia | 1.2% |
| 3 | Romania | 1.6% |
| 4 | Bulgaria | 2.3% |
| 5 | Hungary | 2.7% |
Source: Eurostat, EU population diversity by citizenship and country of birth, 1 January 2025, EU total population 450.6 million.
Comparing this table with the equivalent country of birth table from the companion article reveals something worth noticing directly, Luxembourg’s foreign-born share was 51.5 percent but its foreign-national share is 47.0 percent, meaning roughly 4.5 percentage points of Luxembourg’s population were born abroad but have already naturalized as Luxembourgish citizens. The gap runs the same direction in most countries, foreign-born shares consistently exceed foreign-national shares, since the first includes everyone naturalized plus everyone who has not yet naturalized, while the second counts only the latter group.
Where Europe’s Foreign Nationals Come From
EU citizenship statistics split cleanly into two categories, other-EU-country citizens exercising the bloc’s free movement rights, and non-EU, or third-country, nationals subject to ordinary immigration law.
Among EU nationals living in a different EU country, Romanian, Italian, and Polish citizens form the three largest groups, a pattern rooted in large, sustained labor mobility corridors dating back to the 2004 and 2007 EU enlargement rounds for Poland and Romania respectively, alongside longer-standing Italian mobility within the bloc.
Among non-EU nationals, Ukrainian, Turkish, and Moroccan citizens are the three largest groups, with the Ukrainian figure substantially elevated since 2022 by wartime displacement, and the Turkish and Moroccan communities reflecting decades-long labor migration histories dating to postwar guest worker programs and subsequent family reunification.
EU Free Movement and Nationality Statistics
Citizens of EU member states benefit from freedom of movement rights that citizens of non-EU countries do not automatically receive, meaning an EU national relocating to another EU country faces essentially no immigration barrier, no visa, no work permit requirement, no residence quota.
This structural difference shows up clearly in the data, Luxembourg holds by far the largest share of other-EU-country citizens in its population, 35.8 percent, followed by Cyprus at 10.1 percent and Austria at 10.0 percent, reflecting both economic integration and, in Luxembourg’s case specifically, its position as host to major EU institutions that draw staff and contractors from across the bloc.
At the opposite end, Poland and Lithuania each have just 0.1 percent of their population holding another EU country’s citizenship, with Latvia at 0.2 percent, Romania at 0.3 percent, Bulgaria at 0.5 percent, Croatia at 0.6 percent, Slovakia at 0.7 percent, and Hungary at 0.9 percent, all countries with comparatively little inbound intra-EU migration relative to their outbound flows.
Naturalization, When Foreign Nationals Become Citizens
Naturalization is the legal process by which a foreign national acquires citizenship of their country of residence, typically after meeting requirements around minimum residence duration, language proficiency, integration, and, in most EU countries, either renouncing prior citizenship or qualifying for one of the growing number of dual citizenship exceptions.
Naturalization rules vary substantially by country, some EU states allow dual citizenship broadly, others restrict it to specific circumstances such as citizenship acquired by birth versus by choice, and minimum residence requirements before eligibility range from roughly three years in some countries to a decade or more in others.
This variation is a major reason two countries with similar foreign-born shares can show quite different foreign-national shares, a country with faster, more accessible naturalization pathways converts foreign-born residents into citizens more quickly, shrinking its foreign-national count even as its foreign-born count stays the same.
Stateless Populations and Recognized Non-Citizens
A specific and easily misunderstood pattern appears in the citizenship data for Estonia and Latvia, where relatively large shares of the population are classified as non-EU citizens or as stateless despite having lived their entire lives in those countries.
This reflects a specific historical legacy, the presence of recognized non-citizens, primarily former Soviet Union citizens and their descendants who are permanently resident in Estonia and Latvia but never automatically acquired citizenship of either newly independent state after 1991, and who in many cases have also not acquired Russian or any other citizenship. This is a distinct legal category from ordinary labor or family migration and should not be read as evidence of recent large-scale immigration into either country.
Nationality and the Labor Market
Foreign nationals make up a disproportionate share of employment in specific sectors across the EU, particularly construction, agriculture, hospitality, and, increasingly, healthcare and elder care, sectors facing persistent domestic labor shortages tied to an aging workforce.
Countries with the highest foreign-national shares generally also show the strongest reliance on foreign labor to fill these gaps, though the relationship is not perfectly linear, since some countries with high foreign-national shares, such as Luxembourg, draw heavily on cross-border commuters who work in the country but are counted as residents elsewhere and therefore fall outside these particular statistics entirely.
Foreign-Born Versus Foreign-National, the Naturalization Gap
Placing the country of birth and nationality figures side by side for the same countries shows naturalization activity directly, the wider the gap between a country’s foreign-born share and its foreign-national share, the more of its immigrant population has already become citizens.
| Country | Foreign-Born Share | Foreign-National Share | Naturalization Gap |
|---|---|---|---|
| Luxembourg | 51.5% | 47.0% | 4.5 points |
| Malta | 32.0% | 29.4% | 2.6 points |
| Cyprus | 27.6% | 24.8% | 2.8 points |
| Sweden | 20.8% | approx 10% | approx 10 points |
| Germany | 20.5% | approx 14% | approx 6 points |
Source, Eurostat, EU population diversity by citizenship and country of birth, 1 January 2025. Sweden’s gap is among the widest in the EU, consistent with its comparatively accessible naturalization pathway and long history of refugee resettlement, meaning a large share of its foreign-born population has already converted to Swedish citizenship. Luxembourg’s gap is smaller in relative terms simply because such a large share of its population is foreign-born to begin with, even a modest naturalization rate still leaves a substantial foreign-national population behind.
What Can and Cannot Be Forecast About Nationality
Total population projections, of the kind covered elsewhere in this series, rest on reasonably well understood inputs, fertility, mortality, and net migration. Nationality projections rest on an additional and much less predictable input, future naturalization policy and behavior, which can shift sharply with a single legislative change in any given country.
A country that tightens or loosens its naturalization requirements can alter its foreign-national share substantially within a few years without any corresponding change in migration flows or foreign-born population at all, which is why this article treats nationality projections with considerably more caution than the population totals covered in the rest of this data series.
2030 and 2050 Scenarios
Looking ahead, several forces are likely to shape how Europe’s nationality statistics evolve. Continued migration, driven by labor shortages tied to Europe’s aging workforce, is likely to keep adding to the foreign-national population in most EU countries, particularly Germany, which has both the largest current foreign-national population and among the most acute demographic pressure to sustain labor migration going forward.
Naturalization policy remains genuinely uncertain and politically contested in several member states, meaning the pace at which today’s foreign nationals convert into citizens, and therefore disappear from future foreign-national statistics even while remaining foreign-born, is one of the least predictable variables in any European demographic forecast.
EU enlargement, should any current candidate countries eventually join the bloc, would instantly reclassify millions of people from non-EU to EU citizens without a single person moving, a reminder that nationality statistics can shift for purely legal and political reasons entirely separate from migration itself.
Frequently Asked Questions
How many foreign nationals live in the EU?
44.7 million as of 1 January 2025, combining 30.6 million non-EU citizens and 14.1 million citizens of another EU country, together about 9.9% of the EU’s population.
Which EU country has the most foreign nationals?
Germany, with 12.4 million, followed by Spain at 6.9 million, France at 6.5 million, and Italy at 5.4 million.
Which EU country has the highest share of foreign nationals?
Luxembourg, at 47.0%, the highest in the EU by a wide margin.
Is nationality the same as country of birth?
No. Nationality is a legal status that can change through naturalization, while country of birth is fixed for life. A country’s foreign-born share is typically higher than its foreign-national share because naturalized citizens still count as foreign-born but no longer count as foreign nationals.
Why do some countries have so many stateless or non-citizen residents?
In Estonia and Latvia specifically, this largely reflects recognized non-citizens, former Soviet Union citizens and their descendants who never automatically acquired citizenship after 1991, a distinct historical category separate from recent migration.
Sources
Eurostat, EU population diversity by citizenship and country of birth, data extracted 2 February 2026, reference date 1 January 2025.
