Last year, more than 280,000 Belarusians received residence permits in the European Union for the first time.

2024-09-13 09:17:29

In 2023, Belarus received 281,279 hundred residence permits in EU countries – this is 7.5% of the total number of permits issued last year, new data shows Eurostat data.

In total, EU countries issued more than 3.7 million first residence permits in 2023 (4.7% more than in 2022), according to Eurostat. Belarusians are second only to Ukrainians in terms of the number of permits obtained (they received 307,300 hundred permits in EU countries last year). In third place are citizens of India (almost 208,000 foreign nationals).

Of all the first residence permits received by Belarusians last year, 52.3% were issued on the basis of work, 2.6% – for education, 2.6% – for family reunification, 42.5% – for other reasons (including on the basis of international protection) . .

Of the total number of primary residence permits received by Belarus last year, Poland issued 90.9% of them, Lithuania issued 5.8%, Germany 0.7%, and 2.7% from other EU countries.

Citizens of Belarus were among the top 5 citizens in countries last year issued Poland, Lithuania and Latvia are the first DNJs:

• Poland – 255,595 (this is 39.8% of the total number of DNJ),
• Lithuania – 16,174 (28.8% of the total number of residence permits issued in Lithuania),
• Latvia – 568 (5.6% of the total number of DNJ).

In Poland, Belarusians received 130.67 thousand DNJ on the basis of work and 117.45 thousand – for other reasons. In Lithuania, 13.47 thousand permits were issued on the basis of work, 758 – for other reasons.

In 2022, Belarusians received a little more than 300,000 first residence permits in EU countries, in 2021 – more than 149,000, in 2020 – 63,500.