I know it sounds strange to say that the top four Foreign Populations in Europe are Turks, Moroccans, Romanians and Italians. Aren’t Italy and Romania part of the European Union? Yes, it is true but these are the Italians and Romanians who are living outside of their countries. There are close to 300,000 Italians living in Switzerland and nearly 740,000 Romanians living in Spain.

 

The fascinating thing about this is what it means for the spread of the gospel. The Romanians have brought the gospel with them to Spain. In the small city of Castelldefels just outside of Barcelona there are two relatively large Romanian churches. These ethnic churches reach out to their host culture.

 

This is ture of the Ecuadorians and many other South and Central Americans. It is estimated that the evangelical population of Spain increased dramatically with the influx of believers from Latin America. They have become an important part of most evangelical churches and have started a considerable number of their own congregations.

 

Here are the top ten foreign populations in the European Union’s 27 countries:

Country…….Pop. in Europe

1. Turkey…..2,419,000

2. Morocco….1,727,000

3. Romania….1,677,000

4. Italy……1,262,000

5. Albania….1,015,000

6. Poland…..1,197,000

7. Portugal…..965,000

8. Germany……773,000

9. Algeria……594,000

10. Ecuador…..511,000

The complete report of immigrants in Europe can be downloaded from here (11MB)