Cyprus has issued 15569 resident permits to non EU citizens in 2015, 18.4 for every 1000 permanent residents, of whom 2580 for family reasons (16,6%), 2226 for education purposes (14.3%), 7337 for employment reasons (47.1%) and 3426 (22.0%) for “other reasons”, according to Eurostat.

Cyprus (47.1%) was among only six Member States, where the main reason for issuing residence permits was employment, together with Poland (69.3% of all residence permits issued in the Member State), Lithuania (53.9%) and Slovenia (47.5%). Compared with the population of each Member State, the highest rates of first resident permits issued in 2015 were recorded in Malta (23.1 first residence permits issued per thousand population), Cyprus (18.4), Poland (14.3) Sweden (11.3) and the United Kingdom (9.7). In 2015, 5.1 first residence permits were issued per thousand population in the EU.

Out of the 15569 permits, 2069 were issued to Russians (13.3%), 1911 Syrians (12.3%) and 1565 to Phillipinos (10.1%).

According to Eurostat In 2015, 2.6 million first residence permits were issued in the European Union (EU) to non-EU citizens, a record number since the data collection began (2008) and up by 12.1% compared with 2014. This increase was mainly due to the higher number of first permits issued for employment reasons (+23.5%, from slightly less than 0.6 million in 2014 to more than 0.7 million last year). Accounting for 28.9% of all first residence permits issued in the EU in 2015, family remained the main reason of deliverance, followed by employment (27.2%), other reasons (23.8%) and education (20.2%).

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