About 117,000 foreigners were established in Romania at the end of December 2017, and 3,900 of them were international refugees, refugees or people with other types of protection, according to Luciana Lazarescu, from the Center for Research and Documentation in the Field of Integration of Immigrants (CDCDI).

Romania has one of the lowest percentages of residents from outside the European Union, of 0.3%, thus coming in the last places in the EU, along with Slovenia and Slovakia. Of the total number of foreigners who immigrate to Romania, only 9% come under a contract of employment, local Mediafax reported. The main reasons why foreigners come to Romania are family reunification (43%) and for studies (23%).

The number of foreigners outside the European Union that choose Romania is small because they face several difficulties, such as language barriers, the average wage limit for migrant workers, and the poor registration of foreigners in the statistics of institutions with labor attributions.

Meanwhile, estimations showed that around 3.4 million Romanian left the country between 2007 and 2017, a figure that places Romania on the second place in the world on emigration, after Syria, according to the UN, Luciana Lazarescu said.

UN report: Romania’s population drop by 2050, among Eastern Europe’s highest

Irina Marica, irina.marica@romania-insider.com