In 2020 Germany saw the lowest increase in the number of foreigners in the last ten years, according to data published by Germany's Federal Statistical Office on Monday. However, despite the pandemic, more than 26,000 Croatians emigrated to Germany last year alone.

The net increase in the number of immigrants holding Croatian citizenship with residency in Germany in 2020 was 11,955, to total 426,845 people.

In 2020, 26,335 Croatian nationals emigrated to Germany while 10,305 Croatians moved out. A further 1,000 Croatian nationals received German citizenship, and as such were struck from Germany’s registry of foreigners.

Croatians are the sixth most numerous foreign community in Germany – after Turks, Poles, Syrians, Romanians, and Italians. German statistics bureau categorizes immigrants by the nationality they hold, meaning that the numbers for Croatian nationals also includes ethnic Croats from Bosnia and Herzegovina, many of whom hold dual Bosnian-Croatian citizenship.

The number of Croatians with residency in Germany has almost doubled in the seven and a half years since Croatia joined the EU in mid-2013. In 2012, the last year before Croatia’s accession to the EU, there were 224,971 Croatian nationals in Germany.

Overall, the number of people holding a foreign passport in Germany increased by 262,000 in 2020. In 2019 the number of foreigners had increased by 376,000.

Statistics for 2020 show that immigration from other EU countries had remained stable throughout the year, opposed to immigration from non-EU countries which slowed down considerably, probably due to travel restrictions and economic difficulties related to the coronavirus pandemic.

At the end of 2020, roughly 11.4 million foreigners lived in Germany, out of a total population of around 84 million.

The number of German residents who are nationals of Western Balkan countries also increased last year. Germany currently has 211,000 nationals of Bosnia and Herzegovina, or about 7,000 up from 2019. The number of Serbians also increased to 242,000, or about 5,000 up from 2019.