Malta (168 permits per 1,000 people), Latvia and Estonia (142) along with Cyprus (130) were the EU Member States where the highest number of non-EU citizens held valid residence permits relative to the EU Member State’s population.
Germany (5.4 million valid permits), France (3.9 million), Italy (3.8 million) and Spain (3.6 million) together accounted for 69.9 % of the valid residence permits granted to non-EU citizens.
The stock of valid residence permits granted to non-EU citizens to reside in the EU increased by 7.8 % between the end of 2021 and the end of 2022. However, there was a reduction in the stock of valid permits granted to non-EU citizens in three EU Member States: down 2.3 % in Hungary, 3.6 % in Latvia and 8.2 % in Sweden.
At the end of 2022 there were just over 267,000 valid resident permits in Latvia, according to the data, down from 277,000 at the end of 2021. Back in 2017 there were 313,000 valid resident permits in Latvia and the figure has been gradually falling every year since.
