The number of international migrants worldwide reached an estimated 304 million in mid-2024, with EU nations leading in terms of residence permit numbers.
Data from multiple official sources — including Eurostat, UN agencies, the World Bank and the International Labour Organisation — has been released by the European Commission’s Joint Research Centre in its latest Atlas of Migration, the Commission announced on Friday.
The publication describes migration and displacement patterns by country and region, with a particular focus on the EU.
International migration has grown steadily since the start of the century, rising by 75% compared with 34% growth in the world population, the report informs.
The global number of refugees has almost tripled over the past two decades, from 15.3 million in mid-2012 to more than 42.5 million by mid-2025, according to the Atlas.
About 18% of those refugees were in the EU — 7.7 million people, including around 4.4 million displaced from Ukraine.
Asia hosted about 15 million refugees and Africa 9.2 million, while the EU recorded the highest relative increase in refugee numbers over the past five years at 200%, compared with 54% in the Americas and about 30% in Africa and Asia.
Migration and asylum in the EU
EU countries issued 3.5 million new residence permits in 2024, down from 3.8 million in 2023, interrupting more than a decade of growth that paused only during the Covid-19 pandemic, the Joint Research Centre said.
About 60% of new permits issued in 2024 were for work and family reasons — 32% and 27% respectively.
Spain, Germany and Poland issued nearly half of the EU’s first residence permits to non-EU citizens in 2024 — around 1.6 million out of 3.5 million.
Measured per head of population, Malta and Cyprus recorded the highest number of new permits, at 52 and 42 permits per 1,000 inhabitants respectively, compared with an EU average of eight.
First-time asylum applications in the EU fell by 13% in 2024, from more than one million in 2023 to about 913,000.
The downward trend continued in 2025, with roughly 449,000 first-time applications in the first eight months, compared with around 613,000 over the same period in 2024.
The Atlas also cited UN figures showing more than 51 million people needed international protection at the end of 2024, while the number of armed conflicts rose to more than 180 in 2024.
