Foreign nationals made up 24.8 per cent of Cyprus’ population, placing the island among the EU countries with the highest shares of foreigners, data released on Monday by Eurostat shows.

As of last January, Cyprus ranked third in the EU, behind Luxembourg and Malta, reflecting the scale of inward migration relative to its population size.

Across the EU, around 46.7 million people living within the bloc were born outside it, accounting for 10.4 per cent of the total population of 450.6 million.

The figure represents a year-on-year increase of nearly two million people, underlining the continued demographic impact of migration within the union.

Luxembourg recorded by far the highest proportion of foreign nationals, who accounted for 47 per cent of its population, while more than half of its residents were born abroad.

Malta followed with 29.4 per cent of its population holding foreign citizenship.

The largest actual numbers of foreign nationals were found in Germany, Spain, France and Italy.

Together, those four countries housed almost 70 per cent of all foreigners living in the EU.

However, their foreign populations represented a significantly smaller share of total residents compared with countries such as Cyprus or Malta.

By contrast, several eastern EU member states continued to record very low proportions of foreign nationals.

In Poland and Slovakia, foreigners accounted for just over 1 per cent of the population, while Romania, Bulgaria and Hungary also remained below 3 per cent.

The data further show that foreigners in the EU are divided between third-country nationals and citizens of other member states.

While non-EU nationals form the larger group overall, Cyprus stands out for having a relatively high share of EU citizens among its foreign population, ranking second after Luxembourg.