Vote to leave EU drives migration from bloc down below 100,000

NET migration from the European Union has fallen below 100,000 for the first time in five years in the first signs that Brexit is helping to drive down immigration from the bloc.

There was a significant drop in the number of EU citizens coming to work after the Brexit vote, with the number leaving rising during the same period.

According to figures published by the Office for National Statistics (ONS), 90,000 more EU migrants arrived than left in the year to September 2017, a 45 per cent decline on 2016, while global net migration was also down on the record levels seen in 2015-16.

It is the first time net migration from Europe has dipped below six figures since the year to March 2013, when it was 95,000. The last time the measure was lower was in 2012, at 82,000.

However, the number of EU nationals in Britain applying for British citizenship more than doubled last year, with 38,528 applications in 2017, compared with 15,460 in the previous year.

Jonathan Portes, professor of economic and public policy at King’s College London, said the Brexit vote had made the UK a “significantly less attractive” destination for EU migrants.

Prof Guglielmo Meardi, of Warwick Business School, said the downturn could be explained by economic and demographic issues affecting eastern European countries.

“There have been very low birth rates in central and eastern Europe since the 1990s, contrasting with the baby booms of the 1980s that fed the large migration flows over the last decade,” he said.

“Since 2004, unemployment in Poland has fallen from 20 per cent to 5 per cent, and their average wage has increased from around a fifth of British wages to around a half now. It may be expected that for the same reasons arrivals from Bulgaria and Romania will also start to decline.”

Caroline Nokes, the immigration minister, said the Government remained committed to bringing down net migration to the “tens of thousands” but would continue to attract migrants who brought “significant benefits” to the economy.