Greece and Cyprus among the EU countries hosting proportionally to their population the greatest number of non-national children, at 13% and 12% respectively.
According to the latest Eurostat report, as of 1 January 2020, around 6.5 million children aged less than 18 years of age were non-national, meaning they did not have the citizenship of the EU Member States they lived in, representing 8% of the total number of children in the EU.
In relative terms, the EU Member State hosting the highest share of non-national children was Luxembourg (48% of the total child population in Luxembourg), followed by Austria (19%), Malta (15%), Greece (13%), Germany and Cyprus (both 12%).
In absolute terms, the EU Member States hosting the highest number of non-national children were Germany (1.7 million, or 26% of non-national children in the EU), France (1.1 million, or 17%), Italy (1.0 million, or 16%) and Spain (0.9 million, or 14%). Almost 3 out of 4 children without the citizenship of their EU country of residence were residing in one of those four Member States in 2020.
At the other end of the scale, the Member States recording the lowest shares were mainly located in the eastern part of the EU as illustrated by the shares observed in Romania, Slovakia, Poland, Lithuania and Bulgaria which are all less than 1%.
