Foreign citizens account for 6.4 per cent of the total population of the 27 member states of the European Union, according to figures released on September 7 2010 by Eurostat, the bloc's statistics office.

As at January 1 2009, 31.9 million foreign citizens were living in the EU, of which 11.9 million were citizens of another EU 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 (four million) and the American continent (3.3 million).

The proportion of foreign citizens varied between less than one per cent in Poland, Romania and Bulgaria and 44 per cent in Luxembourg.

In 2009, the largest numbers of foreign citizens were recorded in Germany (7.2 million), Spain (5.7 million), the United Kingdom (4.0 million in 2008), Italy (3.9 million) and France (3.7 million). More than 75 per cent of the foreign citizens in the EU27 lived in these member states.

In 2009, 37 per cent of the foreign citizens living in the EU27 were citizens of another EU state.

The largest groups were from Romania (two million or six per cent of the total number of foreign citizens in the EU27), Poland (1.5 million or five per cent), Italy (1.3 million or four per cent) and Portugal (one million or three per cent).

Among the citizens of countries outside the EU27, the largest groups were from Turkey (2.4 million or eight per cent of the total number of foreign citizens in the EU27), Morocco (1.8 million or six per cent) and Albania (a million or three per cent).