ABSTRACT
According to the latest data presented by the EU Commission (European Commission, 2006, p. 3), on 1 January 2003, 15.2 million persons residing in the 25 Member States were third-country nationals. This amounts to 3.35 per cent of the total EU-25 population. Moreover, the two million population increase that was registered in the EU-25 in 2005 was mainly due to registered net immigration of 1.7 million. Positive net migration has been recorded in almost all Member States with the exception of Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, the Netherlands and Poland, while Cyprus, Spain and Ireland registered the highest rates.
