NICOSIA – Cyprus has three to times more foreigners living in the country than a number of other European Union countries, some 11 percent of the population coming from elsewhere, the highest in the bloc behind Luxembourg and Malta.

That was according to data from the EU’s statistics agency Eurostat which showed it was one of the few countries higher than 10 percent, the island attractive to refugees and migrants and residents of other EU states as well.

Cyprus also is a home base for many British residents, the United Kingdom being the former Colonial ruler and still with a military base there and also a favorite of UK tourists.

The data showed, said The Cyprus Mail, that 8 percent of the residents were citizens of non-EU countries compared to 5 percent for the bloc overall, which is home to 23.7 million of them altogether in 27 Member States.

The average of EU citizens living in one of the EU member states with the citizenship of another EU member states was 4 percent, which corresponds to a total of 13.7 million people, the findings said, the paper also reported.

The largest numbers of non-nationals living in the EU Member States were recorded in Germany (10.6 million people), Spain (5.4 million), France and Italy (both 5.2 million) the total of non-nationals 70.3 percent of those in all EU states.

In tax haven Luxembourg, some 47 percent of the population comes from other countries, 38 percent from EU countries, similare to Malta where some 8 percent come from other EU countries.

Non-nationals represented less than 1 percent of the population in Romania, Poland, Slovakia and Bulgaria, 2 percent in anti-immigrant Hungary, and 3 percent in Croatia and Lithuania.