More than 55,000 people had Cypriot residence permits in 2017

In 2017, 56,505 people had a residence permit to live in Cyprus, according to Eurostat figures published on Tuesday.

According to Eurostat, Cyprus had the 20th highest number of valid residence permits in the EU.

The country with the most valid residence permits in 2017 was Germany (4,644,288), followed by Italy (3,608,115) and (2,807,593). In the same year, 1,533,551 people had valid UK residence permits.

At the end of 2017, there were 20.3 million valid residence permits granted to non-EU citizens permitting them to reside in one of the European Union (EU) Member States. Germany (23%), Italy (18%), France (14%), Spain (13%) and the United Kingdom (8%) accounted for three quarters of all valid residence permits granted to non-EU citizens.

The stock of valid residence permits issued to non-EU citizens rose by 5% between the end of 2016 and the end of 2017. The majority (21) of EU Member States reported an increasing number of valid permits.

The highest rate of increase was recorded in Hungary, where the stock of permits granted to non-EU citizens more than doubled (113%), followed by Bulgaria (41%), Malta (25%) and Slovakia (21%).

Among the five Member States with the largest stocks of resident permits, Germany recorded the highest increase, as the number of valid permits rose by 14% between the end of 2016 and the end of 2017. Increases were also recorded in France, Spain and the United Kingdom. In this group only Italy recorded a reduction in the stock of valid permits (-3%). Among all Member States there were five other countries reporting a decline: Estonia, Czechia, Latvia, Greece and Romania.

Almost two fifths (38%) of all valid residence permits at the end of 2017 were issued for family-related reasons, with lower shares for employment reasons (16%), refugee status and subsidiary protection (7%) or education reasons (6%).

The source dataset is accessible here.