The British authorities have issued 22,675 EU Settlement Scheme permits between September 2022 and 2023, which marks a decrease compared to the previous year.
The Home Office reveals that the number of applications for the EU Settlement Scheme, which allows eligible family members of people from European countries to travel to the UK, has decreased by 37 percentage points in the last year, VisaGuide.World reports.
This is further down compared to the 2021 figures when these applications dropped by 22 percent. In total, 127,055 permits under this scheme were granted to European citizens and some British nationals since the scheme was launched in March 2019.
Romanians Are Top Applicants for EUSS
According to Home Office data, a total of 7.5 million applications from the EU, Switzerland, and EEA countries were filed with the UK authorities, with 6.8 million or 90.7 percent of all applications filed by EU citizens.
Romania was the first country for applicants, with a total of 1.6 million requests being recorded between August 2018 and September 2023. This means that more than one-quarter (21.1 percent) of all applications were filed by this nationality group.
Poland followed with 1.2 million applications, while Italy was listed third with 658,040 applications. These three countries account for 45.9 percent of all applications filed to UK authorities since August.
Applicants from Luxembourg, Slovenia, and Malta were the fewest in number compared to other countries, but this can be related to the population numbers of these respective countries.
In addition, a total of 626,060 applications were filed by non-EEA applicants, while EEA, EFTA and Swiss filed 71,850 requests.
89% of All Applicants Headed to England
England region has received the most applications for EUSS since 2018, with 89.1 percent of all requests – 6.7 million in total, being recorded.
Scotland received around 342,970 applications – 94.5 percent of which were filed by EU citizens, while Poles were the nationality group to file the most requests to this country – 108,780 or 8.9 percent of all applications, followed by Romanians with 38,720 applications and Italians with 26,280 requests (3.9 percent of the total).
Around 118,420 applications were filed to Wales region and another 127,500 to Northern Ireland. Wales was popular among Poles (33,030 applications), Romanians (20,460) and Bulgarians (8,440), while in Northern Ireland, except for Poles, Romanians and Italians, Bulgarians (15,130), Lithuanians (15,430) and Portuguese (13,500) also had high interest.