Fewer EU Nationals Living In UK Amid Brexit Crisis

24 May 2019, 16:23 | Updated: 24 May 2019, 16:24

Figures released on Friday show fewer EU nationals are living in the UK, for the first time since official data recording started 15 years ago.

EU net migration to the UK has dropped by over 60% since the UK voted to leave the bloc in 2016. An estimated 3.64 million EU citizens were resident in the country last year.

This was a fall of around 173,000 compared to 2017, when the EU national population in the UK was approximately 3.81 million.

An Office for National Statistics report detailing the findings said: "This decrease follows continual increases since 2004."

Much of the decrease was due to a fall in the number of occupants from eight eastern European countries that joined the EU in 2004.

Last year there were 1.43 million nationals of the so-called EU8 states living in the UK, down by 153,000 on the number in 2017.

The number of Polish citizens living in the UK fell by 116,000 year-on-year to 905,000.

Despite the recent decline, Polish remains the most common non-British nationality in the UK, followed by Romanian (415,000) and Indian (355,000).

Last year the overall non-British population in the UK was 6.1 million, while 9.3 million inhabitants were born abroad.