Methodology
EU legislation in the field of managed migration statistics obliges data providers to follow agreed concepts, definitions, and breakdowns to ensure comparability of the asylum data they transmit to Eurostat.
Metadata
Residence permits and immigration law enforcement data collections are based on respective Eurostat methodological and technical guidance for each of the data collection:
Residence permits statistics collected by Eurostat cover all the authorisations valid for at least 3 months issued by a Member State's authorities allowing a third-country national to stay legally on its territory.
When the national laws and administrative practices of a Member State allow for specific types of long-term visa or immigration status to be granted instead of residence permits, they are also included in residence permit statistics.
First permit is the main category of flow data on residence permits, since it aims to measure the number of third-country nationals who received for the first time within the last 6 months an authorisation to enter and stay for at least 3 months within the EU's territory.
Eurostat statistics on enforcement of immigration legislation concern non-EU citizens refused entry at external borders, apprehended as being illegally present on the territory of an EU Member State, who have been issued an order to leave an EU country, or who have been returned from an EU country following an order to leave.
Statistics on the enforcement of immigration legislation exclude outgoing asylum seekers who are transferred from one EU Member State to another under the mechanism established by the Dublin regulation (EU regulation 1560/2003 and EU regulation 604/2013); these cases are covered by Dublin statistics available in the database.
Further reading
- Residence permits – a methodological and analytical overview
- Enforcement of immigration legislation statistics introduced
Data sources
Eurostat collects residence permits and immigration law enforcement data from EU and EFTA countries' interior ministries and related immigration agencies.
Data are entirely based on administrative sources and are provided mainly by interior ministries or related immigration agencies. Eurostat statistics on residence permits are collected on the basis of Article 6 of EU regulation 862/2007 on migration and international protection.
Statistics on the enforcement of immigration legislation are based on administrative data provided by national authorities in line with the requirements of EU regulation 862/2007 concerning statistics on migration and international protection. The compilation of these statistics draws on the terms used by the Schengen borders code, an EU code on the rules governing the movement of persons across borders (EU regulation 2016/399).