Eurostat, the statistical office of the European Union
F2: Population and Migration
2920 Luxembourg LUXEMBOURG
Residence permits data collection refers to residence permits as any authorisation issued by the authorities of a Member State allowing a third-country national (non-EU citizen) to stay legally on its territory. These statistics cover also some specific cases in which the third-country nationals have the right to be move to and stay in other EU Member States.
Temporary protection status is considered of different administrative nature then the residence permits reported in RESPER data collection. Therefore, persons benefitting from temporary protection are not included in any of the Residence permits statistics. These persons are subject of another data collection on Temporary Protection (TP).
Data is based on administrative sources1, provided mainly by the Ministries of Interior or related Immigration Agencies. Data are generally disseminated in July in the year following the reference year, subject to data availability and data quality.
Residence permits statistics is based on Council Regulation (CE) No 862 of 11 July 2007 (Migration Statistics Regulation) as amended by the Regulation 2020/851 and it covers the following topics:
The definitions used for residence permits and other concepts (e.g. first permit) are presented in the section 3.4. Statistical concepts and definitions. The detailed data collection methodology is presented in Annex 11 of this metadata file.
LEGAL FRAMEWORK
Residence data contain statistical information based on Article 6 of Council Regulation (CE) No 862 of 11 July 2007. This legal framework refers to the initial residence permits data collection with 2008 first reference period (e.g. first residence permits; change of immigration status or reason to stay; all valid residence permits in the end of the year and long-term residence permits valid in the end of the year) and it provides also a general framework for newer data collections based on specific European legal acts (e.g. statistics on EU Blue Cards and statistics on single permits) or provided on voluntary basis (e.g. residence permits issued for family reunification with beneficiaries of protection status).
Regulation 2020/851 amending Council Regulation (CE) No 862 of 11 July 2007 was recently implemented. The amendment introduced several changes to the statistics on Asylum and Managed Migration. Some data collections become mandatory starting with the 2021 reference period, while new statistics are subject to pilot studies for further assessing the feasibility of collecting these statistics.
RECENT DEVELOPMENTS
Starting with 2022 reference period the following change regarding data on residence permits was introduced: Unknown category is added to the categories “Economic Activity” (for tables ict1_2, ict2_2, sw1, sw2) and “Professional Position” (in table ict13) to allow the reporting of these breakdowns when not all information is available for the existing categories.
Starting with the 2021 reference period, there were several improvements in the data collection, including the methodological aspects. These changes were introduced through the implementation of Regulation 2020/851 amending Council Regulation (CE) No 862 of 11 July 2007. More details are available in the Annex 11.
INDICATORS
The indicators presented in the table 'Long-term residents among all non-EU citizens holding residence permits by citizenship on 31 December (%)' are produced within the framework of the pilot study related to the integration of migrants in the Member States, following the Zaragoza Declaration.
The Zaragoza Declaration, adopted in April 2010 by EU Ministers responsible for immigrant integration issues, and approved at the Justice and Home Affairs Council on 3-4 June 2010, called upon the Commission to undertake a pilot study to examine proposals for common integration indicators and to report on the availability and quality of the data from agreed harmonised sources necessary for the calculation of these indicators. In June 2010 the ministers agreed "to promote the launching of a pilot project with a view to the evaluation of integration policies, including examining the indicators and analysing the significance of the defined indicators taking into account the national contexts, the background of diverse migrant populations and different migration and integration policies of the Member States, and reporting on the availability and quality of the data from agreed harmonised sources necessary for the calculation of these indicators".
These indicators are produced on the basis of residence permit statistics collected by Eurostat on the basis of Article 6 of the Migration Statistics Regulation 862/2007. As a denominator data on the stock of all valid permits to stay at the end of each reporting year are used. As a numerator data on the stock of long-term residents are used. Two types of long term residents are distinguished in accordance with the residence permit statistics: EU long-term resident status (as regulated by the Council Directive 2003/109/EC) and the National long-term resident status (as regulated by the national legislation in the Member States).
DATA CONSISTENCY
The data providers should use the same methodological specifications provided by Eurostat and some collected tables from should be cross-consistent according to this methodology. However, consistency issues between tables exist due to some technical limitations (e.g. different data sources) or different methodology applied to each table (see the quality information from below or the national metadata files) or different point in time of producing each tables.
1There are few exceptions referring to the situation in which the administrative registers cannot provide the required information and some estimations are made. For example, the statistics for the United Kingdom (2008-2019) use different data sources to those used in EU Member States and EFTA countries. For that reason, the statistics on residence permits published by Eurostat for UK may not be fully comparable with the statistics reported by other countries. Statistics for the United Kingdom are not based on records of residence permits issued (as the United Kingdom does not operate a system of residence permits), but instead relate to the numbers of arriving non-EU citizens permitted to enter the country under selected immigration categories. According to the United Kingdom authorities, data are estimated from a combination of information due to be published in the Home Office Statistical Bulletin 'Control of Immigration: Statistics, United Kingdom' and unpublished management information. The 'Other reasons' category includes: diplomat, consular officer treated as exempt from control; retired persons of independent means; all other passengers given limited leave to enter who are not included in any other category; non-asylum discretionary permissions. Another example is the data on stock of all valid residence permits for Denmark, see annex 12 (Data quality of valid residence permits in Denmark).
2 These are several data collection developed separately from the initial residence permits data collections. They are based on special requirements in the concerned EU Directives. However, there are several categories in the initial data collection that refers also to the EU Directives (see the definitions section below). Moreover, there are categories collected in the initial data collection and in the dedicated data collection also, sometime with different definitions. For example, the EU Blue cards issued during the year are collected in two datasets: 1. table migr_resocc countig the EU Blue Cards issued as "first permits" and 2. in the EU Blue Cards counting all EU Blue Cards issued. The difference between these two categories is represented by the EU Blue cards that are not first permits.
Classification of citizenship is based on the ISO-3166 code list (using alpha-2) with minor changes.
These differences consist of minor changes that have occurred over time to reflect the creation of new countries or citizenships. In some cases, these citizenship categories are not universally recognised but are used by some Member States in the data supplied to Eurostat.
A further case is that of "Recognised non-citizen" – a category introduced by Eurostat to cover a "person who is not a citizen of the reporting country nor of any other country, but who has established links to that country including some but not all rights and obligations of full citizenship. Recognised non-citizens are not included in number of EU citizens." This category is used in Eurostat's population and migration statistics.
Classification of occupation based on ISCO-08 at the level of sub-major groups for the statistics on EU Blue Cards.
Migration statistics.
Residence permit:
Any authorisation valid for at least 3 months issued by the authorities of a Member State allowing a third-country national to stay legally on its territory. According to Article 6.2 of the Council Regulation (CE) No 862/2007 of 11 July 2007, when national laws and administrative practices of a Member State allow for specific categories of long-term visa or immigration status to be granted instead of residence permits, such visas and grants of statuses are also included in these statistics.
Temporary protection status is considered of different administrative nature then the residence permits reported in Residence Permits data collection. Therefore, persons benefitting from temporary protection are not included in any of the Residence permits statistics. These persons are subject of another data collection on Temporary Protection (TP).
First permit:
Residence permit issued to a person for the first time.
A residence permit is considered as a first permit also if the time gap between the expiry of the old permit and the start of validity of the new permit issued for the same reason is at least 6 months, irrespective of the year of issuance of the permit.
The convention of first permit relates to permits issued at all levels of administrative/judicial instances and by all national authorities. Thus, if at the first instance permission to reside was not granted but an appeal decision was positive at the second instance, the permission (resulting from appeal decision) shall be considered to be a first permit (if of course the time gap conditions are met).
Permits granted during the reference period on the occasion of a person changing immigration status or reason to stay:
Permission to reside is considered as a change of immigration status or reason to stay if the period between the expiry of the old permit and the start of validity of the following permit is less than 6 months and the immigration status or reason to stay has been changed.
Only changes between major categories can be recorded as a change of status permit. These major categories are:
Statistics related to the change of immigration status/reason to stay include permissions granted at all levels of administrative/judicial instances and by all national authorities.
Long-term residents:
Long-term resident status refers to permits issued under Council Directive 2003/109/EC. This is based on a total duration of legal residence of 5 years or longer, combined with a series of other conditions that must be met to qualify for this status.
Third-country nationals:
Any person who is not a citizen of the Union within the meaning of Article 17 (1) of the Treaty, including stateless persons (see Art. 2.1 (i) of the Council Regulation (EC) no 862/2007).
EU Blue Card:
EU Blue Card refers to the authorisation bearing the term "EU Blue Card" entitling its holder to reside and work in the territory of a Member State under the terms of Council Directive 2009/50/EC (Article 2(c)).
Single permit:
Single permit means a residence permit issued by the authorities of a Member State within a simplified procedure that allows a third-country national to "reside legally in its territory for the purpose of work" (Art 2 (c) Directive 2011/98/EU).
FRPS permit:
FRPS permit means residence permit issued to a third-country national for the purpose of family reunification under Family Reunification Directive 2003/86/EC, family unity under Article 23 of the Qualification Directive (Directive 2011/95/EU) or relevant national legislation where the sponsor is a beneficiary of protection status.
Intra-corporate transferee permit:
Intra-corporate transferee permit means an authorisation bearing the acronym ‘ICT’ entitling its holder to reside and work in the territory of the first Member State and, where applicable, of second Member States (implies the possibility of short-term mobility), under the terms of this Directive; (Art 3(i) Definitions - Directive 2014/66/EU).
For further information on definitions, please see Annex 5 or Annex 8 or Annex 11 for complete methodological guidelines.
For further information on the compliance with definitions, please see Annex 1 and the national metadata files.
Each table refers to the number of persons, not to the number of administrative decisions or acts.
For the exceptions please see Annex 1.
The Residence permits statistics refer to the third-country nationals who received a residence permits in the EU Member States or EFTA countries or the United Kingdom, or EU Blue Card in the EU Member States. Please see "Concepts and definitions" for the details of the categories of permissions recorded under residence permits statistics.
For Residence permits: EU Member States, the United Kingdom and EFTA countries.
For the data collection on EU Directives, in general: EU Member States except (Denmark, Ireland) and the United Kingdom for 2008-2019.
First reference year by data collection:
Not applicable.
Units of measure are are in general absolute numbers of persons for residence permit statistics.
Different unit of measure is applied for the three recent data collections.
| Data collection covered by RESPER statistics | Unit of measure | Double counting of same person allowed |
| Data collection under Article 6 of Regulation | Person | No* |
| EU Blue Cards | Person | No |
| Single Permits | Person | No* |
| Seasonal workers | Number[1] | Yes |
| Intra-Corporate Transfers (ICT) | Number[2] | Yes |
| FRPS issued during the year | Person | No |
| FRPS valid at the end of the year | Person | No |
| Students and Researchers | Number[3] | Yes |
[1] of Authorisations
[2] of Permits/Notifications
[3] of authorisations/notifications
Calendar year.
Member States have the responsibility to send residence permits statistics to Eurostat. The main legal act of the legal framework is the Council Regulation (CE) No 862 of 11 July 2007 on Community statistics on migration and international protection.
Additional legal acts related to specific data collections:
Eurostat provide Technical Guidelines to the member States describing the procedures and the quality requirements for the statistics collected on voluntary basis.
Not available.
Regulation (EC) No 223/2009 on European statistics (recital 24 and Article 20(4)) of 11 March 2009 (OJ L 87, p. 164), stipulates the need to establish common principles and guidelines ensuring the confidentiality of data used for the production of European statistics and the access to those confidential data with due account for technical developments and the requirements of users in a democratic society.
Not applicable.
Depending on the data availability, most of the statistics will be released by end September of the year following the reference year.
Not applicable.
In line with the Community legal framework and the European Statistics Code of Practice Eurostat disseminates European statistics on Eurostat's website (see item 10 - 'Accessibility and clarity') respecting professional independence and in an objective, professional and transparent manner in which all users are treated equitably. The detailed arrangements are governed by the Eurostat protocol on impartial access to Eurostat data for users.
Annual.
News releases on-line.
Statistics explained article on "Residence permits statistics" and available online at:
Please consult free data on-line or refer to contact details.
Not applicable.
Not applicable.
Member States have the responsibility to send residence permits statistics to Eurostat. Eurostat provides Technical Guidelines to the Member States describing the procedures and the quality requirements for the statistics collected. See Annex 11.
The main legal acts of the legal framework are represented by the Council Regulation (CE) No 862 of 11 July 2007 (Article 6) on Community statistics on migration and international protection and Council Directive 2009/50/EC (Article 20) on the conditions of entry and residence of third-country nationals for the purposes of highly qualified employment.
Member States have the responsibility to send residence permits statistics to Eurostat. Eurostat provides Technical Guidelines to the Member States describing the procedures and the quality requirements for the statistics collected.
The main legal acts of the legal framework are represented by the Council Regulation (CE) No 862 of 11 July 2007 (Article 6) on Community statistics on migration and international protection and Council Directive 2009/50/EC (Article 20) on the conditions of entry and residence of third-country nationals for the purposes of highly qualified employment.
Statistics on residence permits are based entirely on administrative sources. Member States compile data in compliance with the Council Regulation (EC) 862/2007 and following guidelines and instructions provided by Eurostat. Before publishing the data, consistent validation checks are performed.
Regulation (EC) No 862/2007 lays down the common framework for compilation of statistics on migration and international protection. However, in order to produce comparable data harmonised between the Member States, it was necessary to complement it with an associated implementing measure adopted by the Commission:
Non-compliance follow-up measures have been launched by the Commission in response to the most serious cases of missing or incomplete data – where for example, no data have been supplied by a country in response to a data collection. Actions undertaken have demonstrated that a large majority of Member States make a serious effort to be compliant. In addition, in several cases, a solution to the difficulties could be found thanks to reciprocal collaboration between the national authorities and Commission's services.
Other information can be found in the Report from the Commission to the European Parliament and the Council on the implementation of Regulation (EC) No 862/2007).
Certain differences in definitions and practices of producing statistics exist between countries. Compliance with the Regulation requirements ensures a sufficient level of accuracy and comparability.
Number of Member States have introduced more integrated and comprehensive administrative systems that make use of modern IT and communication methods. Problems of missing and incomplete data still occur (see the annexes), often been caused by the non-recording of certain information in the administrative systems that are frequently used as data sources. A number of national authorities have introduced improved procedures to ensure that the necessary information is gathered as part of the immigration administrative process and better computing systems to allow this information to be readily accessed to be included in the statistical data. Non-compliance follow-up measures have been launched by the Commission in response to the most serious cases of missing or incomplete data – where for example, no data have been supplied by a country in response to a data collection. Actions undertaken have demonstrated that a large majority of Member States make a serious effort to be compliant (see also Report from the Commission to the European Parliament and the Council on the implementation of Regulation (EC) No 862/2007).
Within the Commission, the main user of migration and asylum statistics is DG Migration and Home Affairs. However, these statistics are also frequently used by other Directorates General, in particular, by DG Employment, Social Affairs and Inclusion, and by DG Justice and Consumers.
One important use of the statistics has been a part of the allocation of the budgetary envelope for each Member State for the Solidarity and Management of Migration Flows Funds.
The statistics are used in several publications of the Commission, as well as in the preparation of regular reports, policy proposals and analysis. For example, the Commission's Annual Report on Migration and Asylum4 uses these statistics as a means to quantify progress made towards the implementation of the European Pact on Immigration and Asylum and to highlight recommendations for further actions. Migration and asylum statistics are also used by the European Migration Network (EMN) as a basis for its annual EU- and national-level statistical and analytical reports. The statistics also provide input to the EMN studies and reports that address specific issues of current policy importance. The statistics collected under the Regulation are widely used in official publications and by a wide range of users. In addition to publication on the Eurostat website and on-line dissemination database, there are regular Eurostat publications that provide updated statistics and statistical commentary. The statistics produced under the Regulation are regularly used by national administrations, academic researchers and civil society groups working on a wide range of topics including the integration of immigrants, the development and monitoring of national asylum and immigration procedures, and the projection of the future population and labour force.
An indicator of the relevance of the migration data to Eurostat's users is the number of data or publications downloaded from the Eurostat's website. Based on the report from 10.02.2023, about 25 000 data extractions were recorded for Residence permits statistics. This refers to the period (August 2021 - July 2021) all datasets from residence permits dissemination folder.
The following datasets were in the top of the extractions for this period:
The implementation of the Regulation has resulted in increases in the completeness and degree of harmonisation of European statistics on migration and international protection. However, despite these improvements, further work is still needed for some of the statistics collected and in some of the Member States. Problems of missing and incomplete data still occur. These problems can vary from the total non-supply of any data covered by an article of the Regulation in the worst cases, to the non-availability of a specific table or disaggregation. Where disaggregations are lacking, this has often been caused by the non-recording of certain information in the administrative systems that are frequently used as data sources.
The accuracy of the data collected under Article 6 of the Regulation depends on the accuracy and efficiency of the underlying administrative systems. The widespread redevelopment of administrative systems had a strongly positive impact on the accuracy of the statistical data.
Data are collected from reliable administrative sources in the EU Member States and EFTA countries with the exception of the United Kingdom.
Please note that the statistics for the United Kingdom (2008-2019) use different data sources to those used in EU Member States and EFTA countries. For that reason, statistics for the UK presented in the statistics published by Eurostat may not be fully comparable with the statistics reported by other countries. Statistics for the United Kingdom are not based on records of residence permits issued (as the United Kingdom does not operate a system of residence permits), but instead, relate to the numbers of arriving non-EU citizens permitted to enter the country under selected immigration categories. According to the United Kingdom authorities, data are estimated from a combination of information due to be published in the Home Office Statistical Bulletin 'Control of Immigration: Statistics, United Kingdom' and unpublished management information. The 'Other reasons' category includes diplomat, consular officer treated as exempt from control; retired persons of independent means; all other passengers given limited leave to enter who are not included in any other category; non-asylum discretionary permissions.
Denmark provides the data for all valid permits using the combination of various sources; a combination of data from The Danish Immigration and Danish Statistics, can be found here https://www.dst.dk/en/Statistik/dokumentation/documentationofstatistics/the-population
Due to the technical reasons and data source limitations, these data is available from 2021 reference period onwards. See more details in Annex 12.
Not applicable.
Not applicable.
Data should be supplied to Eurostat no later than 6 months after the end of the reference period.
Residence permit data are generally published within 7 months after the reference year.
Due to the recent implementation of the Residence Permits Data Collection, some methodological and administrative differences still exist between the Member States. Some countries are in the process of harmonisation with the definitions, reducing conceptual disparities and changing data availability and completeness status for some categories of data. For the analytical purposes and comparisons between the countries please see the methodological annexes concerning the level of compliance with definitions and data completeness (Annex 1, Annex 2 and Annex 3).
The residence permit statistics should be compiled based on the same methodology and the outputs should be comparable between years. Due to the ongoing methodological improvements which may occur at different reference periods, for some categories of permits Member States may apply different rules for the same years. For the analytical purposes and comparisons between the years please see the methodological annexes concerning the level of compliance with definitions and data completeness (Annex 1, Annex 2 and Annex 3).
There is a break in time series in 2018 data reported by Poland for first permits caused by (i) free travel-visas for Ukrainian, Georgian and Moldavian citizens, (ii) the increase of the number of Pole's cardholders granted residence permit and (iii) enter into force of the Seasonal Workers Directive 2014/36/EU. This break in time series refers mainly to the first residence permits issued for "remunerated activities" and for "other" reasons and it has a significant impact on the EU aggregates for these categories. See Annex 9 for more information.
Not applicable.
Internal coherence (e.g. between years, a coherent classification of issued permits) is ensured through the application of the resident permits methodology and through the various validations performed on the data before publication. An important aspect is that residence permit data collection is based on administrative sources fallowing almost the same procedures (due to the lacking administrative register the only exception is the UK, for details please see Annex 3). Following the ongoing improvements of data processing and validation, some revisions of data are expected from the Member States. The majority of issues regarding internal coherence are included in the methodological annexes concerning the level of compliance with definitions and data completeness (Annex 1, Annex 2 and Annex 3).
The types of statistics required under the Regulation are needed also for national purposes, such as for the management of the national system for processing asylum applications or for the monitoring of border control policies. In almost all cases, the data used to produce the statistics are based on existing administrative and statistical systems. The specific burdens placed by the Regulation on national authorities are therefore related to the need to prepare particular disaggregations or tables that might not otherwise have been produced, and to the need to apply the harmonised statistical definitions and concepts. For some national authorities, this resulted in one-off costs associated with the necessary adaptations to methods, procedures and systems.
The extent of the additional burdens varied between the Member States according to the degree of similarity between the existing national systems for migration statistics and the requirements of the Regulation. However, in most Member States and for most of the statistics covered by the Regulation, the additional costs and burden are believed to be relatively limited and to be proportionate to the benefits obtained at both EU and national level of having more complete and better harmonised migration statistics.
The general Eurostat revision policy applies to this domain. According to the policy for routine revisions, national data continue to be revised when additional information from national authorities becomes available. If errors are detected in either national data or in European aggregates, they are corrected immediately. Major revisions and changes in methodology which may lead to breaks in time series shall be announced in advance by the national data providers and approved by Eurostat.________________________________________
The revision practice aligns effectively with the one outlined in sub-concept 17.1 (data revision - policy).
Reported errors are corrected in the disseminated data as soon as the correct data have been validated.
Whenever new country data are validated, the already disseminated data are updated. Revisions of aggregates are made directly after revisions of country data transmitted to Eurostat. Time series breaks caused by major revisions are flagged.
Major revisions are documented and communicated to users in a methodological note.
Data may be published despite incomplete datasets, with some data missing or flagged as provisional or, in very exceptional cases, of low reliability for specific statistics. Such data are replaced with the final versions upon transmission and validation.
The impact of major revisions is analysed in working documents produced for experts meetings held with representatives of the national data providers.
Administrative data sources only. Data are compiled from the administrative records of the national authorities, mainly the Ministries of Interior or Immigration Agencies.
Annual.
Residence permits data is annually collected from administrative sources, having as a statistical unit the number of persons (third-country nationals who received the residence permit). National data suppliers are sending the residence permits data for the following countries: EU Member States, Iceland, Norway, Liechtenstein and Switzerland.
Data providers supply data to Eurostat in Excel templates via the Single Entry Point (SEP) with eDamis.
The residence permits data collection relates to reference periods of one calendar year and shall be completed by national data suppliers that are responsible at the national level for the transmission of the residence permits data to Eurostat (National Statistic Offices, Ministries of Interior or Immigration Agencies).
Before publishing the data, consistent validation checks are performed. Residence permits data are validated through all processing steps, combining manual/visual validation with some tools integrated within the templates and the production environment.
The Member States shall apply the validation checks of the permit statistics before providing data to Eurostat. The statistical process is different in each country. Therefore, each country shall develop its own data validation system, depending on the national infrastructure.
With the aim of assuring the data quality and for harmonising the validation systems between MSs, Eurostat is involved in the following four main activities:
A series of macros have been included in the Excel files (the templates for data collection) in order to allow the data providers to perform the data validation before they are transmitted to Eurostat. A report is produced by this macro with the indication of the cells with problems.
List of EU aggregates used in Residence permits statistics:
• EU28 aggregate refers to European Union before the Brexit. This aggregate covers following countries: BE, BG, CZ, DK, DE, EE, IE, EL, ES, FR, HR, IT, CY, LV, LT, LU, HU, MT, NL, AT, PL, PT, RO, SI, SK, FI, SE, UK
• EU27_2019 aggregate refers to European Union (27 countries without the United Kingdom). This aggregate covers following countries: BE, BG, CZ, DK, DE, EE, IE, EL, ES, FR, HR, IT, CY, LV, LT, LU, HU, MT, NL, AT, PL, PT, RO, SI, SK, FI, SE
EU aggregates are calculated only if all the Member States from the aggregate are available.
Not applicable.
The data series 'Long-term residents by citizenship on 31. December of each year' contains two categories of such permissions:
- EU long-term resident status (This status is defined by Article 2(h) of the Migration Statistics Regulation i.e. to the definition of a long-term resident that is contained in Council Directive 2003/109/EC).
- National long-term resident status (This category includes long-term resident status granted to third-country nationals under rules which are different from Council Directive 2003/109/EC). These data are available only since 2010.
Please note that for 2008 and 2009 reference periods the total of 'Long-term residents by citizenship on 31. December of each year' only includes the data on 'EU long-term resident status' (Long-term resident status: EU directive) permits' category.