As many as 757,000 Ukrainian citizens were given their first residence permits by European Union countries in 2019, according to data issued by the EU statistics agency Eurostat.
Making up 25.6% of the 3 million permits issued last year, Ukrainians constituted the largest non-EU national group admitted for employment, education and other reasons, according to the agency.
Moreover, Ukrainians far outpaced citizens of Morocco (133,000 issued permits, or 4.5%), India (131,000, or 4.4%), China (110,000, or 3.7%) and Brazil (101,000, or 3.4%), which also claimed the top spots on the list.
“Poland was the principal destination for Ukrainian citizens, as 79.2% of all resident permits issued to Ukrainians in the EU-27 in 2019 were issued in this country,” the agency said.
As many 660,000 (or 87.2%) of all Ukrainians who were granted residence permits in 2019 received their permits for employment-related reasons, the data shows. Quite expectedly, the vast majority (83.6%) of them are in Poland.
Ukrainian are the largest migrant group in the Polish foreign workforce. They are followed by 50,000 Indians and 41,000 Belarusians.
Poland alone set a record in issuing permits, with 724,000 non-EU nationals admitted in 2019, followed by Germany with 460,000.
Moreover, as many as 40,000 Ukrainian also got residence permits for family-related reasons across the EU, placing them among the largest groups in this category.
