E fundit!

22:51 TODAY

Businessman Artur Shehu breaks his silence: I am a long-time land owner in Zvërnec, I don't know the investors at all

Albanian businessman Artur Shehu spoke on the Opinion show...

557 thousand Albanians live in Italy, 141 thousand have Italian passports

2026-03-09 09:06:00, Sociale CNA

Albanians are the second largest community living in Italy, after Romanians.

According to Eurostat data on the structure of the foreign population by country of birth, around 557 thousand people born in Albania lived in Italy, while around 416 thousand are Albanian citizens.

The difference between these two figures is mainly related to the fact that a portion of Albanian immigrants have already obtained Italian citizenship, estimated at around 141 thousand people.

This confirms the Albanian community as the second largest in Italy after the Romanian one, maintaining a very consolidated presence in the Italian labor market and in the social structure of the country. Citizens born in Albania make up 8.3% of the total number of immigrants in Italy.

The largest group of immigrants in Italy are Romanians, with around 900,000 citizens born in Romania, or 13.5% of the total.

Considering the current populations of the two countries, Romania with 19 million inhabitants and Albania with 2.36 million inhabitants, the Albanian community in Italy, in relation to the population in the mother country, is several times larger than the Romanian one.

Eurostat does not report data for Greece, where a high number of Albanian immigrants live, estimated to be at the same level, or higher, than in Italy.

In relation to population, Albania has the highest number of immigrants in Europe, with approximately 1 in 2 Albanians living in the EU, which places the country significantly at the top of the list in relation to population.

Massive immigration, Albania tops the list of countries with the most citizens in the EU

Eurostat has reported for each EU country the top five nationalities of foreign citizens. In Slovenia, for example, there are around 30,000 citizens born in Kosovo, or 9.3% of the total.

According to Eurostat, on 1 January 2024, 44.7 million people born outside the EU were living in a European Union country, representing 9.9% of the EU population. This represents an increase of 2.3 million people compared to the previous year.

In addition, 17.9 million people living in one of the EU countries on 1 January 2024 were born in another EU country, marking an increase of 0.2 million people compared to the previous year.

In absolute terms, the largest number of foreign-born people living in the EU on 1 January 2024 were found in Germany (16.9 million), France (9.3 million), Spain (8.8 million) and Italy (6.7 million). Foreign-born people in these four countries together accounted for 66.6% of the total foreign-born people living in the EU, while the same four countries accounted for 57.8% of the total EU population.

The highest relative share of foreign-born persons in relation to the total population was recorded in Luxembourg (51.0% of the resident population), followed by Malta (30.8%), Cyprus (26.9%), Ireland (22.6%), Austria (22.1%), Sweden (20.6%) and Germany (20.2%).

In contrast, foreign-born people made up less than 5% of the population in Poland (2.6%), Romania (3.1%), Bulgaria (3.3%) and Slovakia (3.9%)./ Monitor