Ukrainians received more permanent residence permits in European Union countries than any other nation in 2017, with 661,874 gaining the right to settle in an EU country.
According to data published by the EU’s statistics service Eurostat on Oct. 25, EU member states granted over 3 million residence permits in 2017, with 20 percent of them going to Ukrainian citizens. Syrian and Chinese citizens are next, with around 200,000 nationals of each of these countries obtaining EU residence permits in 2017.
Most of the Ukrainians who obtained permanent residence permits, over 500,000 or 85 percent, got them for Poland.
Ukrainians received the highest number of residence permits in most Eastern European countries, with Lithuania giving out nearly half of all the residence permits it issued in 2017 to Ukrainians. Eurostat said the nearly 90 percent of Ukrainians who received a residence permits in the EU did so because they were employed in a member state.
The number of Ukraine citizens granted permanent residence in the EU is also rising every year: 588,000 Ukrainians received permits in 2016, together obtaining 17 percent of the total number of residence permits issued by EU member states that year.
Ukraine has led the ranking for the fifth straight year, with the number rising from 236,000 in 2013 to 661,000 in 2017. The total number of EU residence permits issued to all non-EU citizens rose from 2.3 million to 3.1 million over the same period.
