Last year, the European Union issued 3.22 million residence permits for non-EU citizens and the figures show that a majority of those non-EU citizens who moved to Croatia in 2018 did it for employment reasons, the Vecernji List daily reported on Saturday.

The European Commission states that “in 2018, some 3.2 million residence permits were issued across the EU to people from non-member countries, and that the main reason for a first residence permit being issued in the EU was for family reasons (915 000 first residence permits).”

The permits are issued for employment-related reasons, family-related reasons, education as well as for subsidiary protection and asylum.

90 percent of first residence permits in Croatia issued for employment-related reasons

Poland with 328 000 permits was by far the leading destination in the EU-28 for those seeking to obtain a residence permit for employment-related reasons. Most non-EU residents seeking employment in Poland were Ukrainians, according to the Vecernji List’s report.

“The next most common destination was the United Kingdom (108 000 permits issued for employment-related reasons), followed by Germany (68 000) and Spain (58 000),” the Commission has reported.

“First residence permits issued for employment-related reasons represented more than half of the total number of permits issued in Croatia (90.3 percent), Lithuania (77.5 percent), Slovenia (71.0 percent), Slovakia (66.5 percent), Malta (59.3 percent), Hungary (56.6 percent) and Poland (51.6 percent),” according to the data provided by the EC.

Employment-related reasons also accounted for the highest shares (but not an absolute majority) of the total number of permits issued in Czechia, Cyprus, Latvia, Romania, Estonia and Denmark, says the EC.

As for education-related reasons, the top destination for the non-EU citizens was the United Kingdom.

The report by the EC reads that the UK “was by far the most common destination in the EU-28 for students from non-member countries.”

“In 2018, there were 190 000 first residence permits issued in the United Kingdom for education-related reasons; this represented three tenths (29.6 percent) of all the permits issued for education-related reasons in the EU-28 and 42.2 percent of the total number of permits issued in the United Kingdom.”

“In relative terms, education-related reasons accounted for the highest share of the total number of permits issued in Ireland (60.5 percent).”

The Zagreb-based Vecernji List reported that only 495 non-EU residents arrived in Croatia in 2018 for education-related reasons, according to statistics about EU first residence permits.