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Big rise in the number of Poles and Romanians in Belgium

Over the past 13 years, there has been a spectacular rise in the number of Polish and Romanian immigrates living in Belgium. The number of Poles here has risen almost tenfold while there are now 21 times more Romanians living here than there were 13 years ago. Poles now form 5.4% of all foreigners living here, while 5.2% of the foreigners living in Belgium come from Romania. This is up from just 1% in 2002.

The figures come from a new report published by the Federal Department of the Economy’s bureau of statistics.

On January 1 2015 1,255,286 people living in Belgium were foreign nationals. This is 11.2% of the total population. The percentage of foreign residents is more twice that in The Netherlands (5.6%) and almost twice as many as in France.

68.3% of the foreign nationals living here are citizens of another EU country. French, Italian, Dutch, Moroccan and Polish nationals form almost half of Belgium’s foreign population (49.1%).

The foreign population is unevenly spread across the country. The Brussels area has a very large contingent of foreign nationals. In some Brussels municipalities they almost are almost as high in number as the Belgians living there.

For example 48.2% of the population of Sint-Gillis is a foreigner. The same is true of 47.6% of the population of Elsene and 45.8% of the population of Etterbeek.

 

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