Spain issued more residence permits than any country in Europe last year, and study was the smallest door

Most weeks this column reports a rule that changed. This week the news is a table of numbers, and it is worth more than most rule changes, because it describes what governments actually did rather than what ministers said they intended. The European Union's statistics office published the 2025 residence permit figures on Friday 11 September and the reporting caught up over the days that followed. The union issued 3.9 million first residence permits to non-EU citizens last year, the highest count since the series began. The country that issued the most of them was not Germany. It was Spain.

What landed this week

The headline figure is 3.9 million first permits across the twenty seven member states in 2025, up 10.1 per cent on 2024, an increase of 355,350 documents in a single year. Spain issued 635,438 of them, which is 16.5 per cent of every first residence permit granted anywhere in the union, and 13.1 per cent more than Spain issued the year before. Germany came second on 605,292, up 11.1 per cent. Poland was third on 467,314 and is the only one of the big issuers where the number went down, by 4.4 per cent. Italy issued 433,099, a rise of a quarter, and France 377,462, up 9.2 per cent. Those five countries between them account for roughly two thirds of everything the union issued.

Scale the figures to population and a different set of countries appears. The EU average works out at nine first permits per thousand residents. Malta issued 57 per thousand and Cyprus 47, Portugal 27. At the other end, Slovakia, Czechia, Romania, Estonia and Bulgaria each issued four. A country can be a small player in absolute terms and still be transformed by the arrivals it takes, which is worth remembering when a headline ranks countries purely by volume, as this one does.

Spain is first, and Poland is half the reason it looks dramatic

Spain overtaking Germany reads like a story about Spain, and it is partly that. Spain's rewritten immigration regulation took effect in May 2025, widening the settlement routes and simplifying the moves between one residence status and another, and a 13.1 per cent rise in a single year is not statistical noise. But the top of the table also moved because somebody stepped back from it. Poland led the European Union in first residence permits for six consecutive years, from 2017 to 2022, and peaked at close to a million in 2021, most of them Ukrainian. Since 2024 Poland has been running a deliberately tighter migration strategy, and last year its number fell while everyone else's rose.

That matters because the two facts point in opposite directions and both are true at once. Europe as a whole issued more permits than ever, and individual governments inside it are moving independently, some opening while others close. There is no single European trend to plan around. There is a set of twenty seven national decisions that happen to add up to a record, and the one you care about is whichever country you are actually applying to.

Work overtook everything, and study came last

Split the 3.9 million by reason and the shape of European migration becomes clearer than any policy speech makes it. Employment accounted for 1.3 million permits, 33.6 per cent of the total, and grew fastest at 16.1 per cent. Family reasons came next at 1.1 million, 28.1 per cent, up 14.1 per cent. Other reasons, a category that includes international protection, accounted for 0.9 million, 22.8 per cent, and was the only group that shrank, by 0.9 per cent. Education finished last, at 0.6 million permits and 15.5 per cent of the total, growing 9 per cent.

Read that last line slowly if your plan for Europe is a student visa, because it is the uncomfortable part of this week's news. Study is the smallest of the four doors and the slowest growing of the three that grew. This is not an argument against studying in Europe, and plenty of the people we work with are right to take that route. It is an argument about what a student permit is, which is a document with an expiry date written into its purpose. It gets you in. It does not keep you there. Everything that determines whether you are still in Europe five years later happens at the conversion, when the student permit has to become a work permit, a graduate search permit or a residence card on some other basis, and the numbers say the work door is the wide one on the far side of that wall.

Where India sits in all of this

By nationality, Ukrainians received the most first permits in 2025 at 335,096. Indians were second at 227,577, which is 5.9 per cent of every first permit the union issued, and Moroccans third at 202,054. For most readers of this site the more useful figure is the reason behind the Indian number, because employment was the principal ground for 44.6 per cent of permits granted to Indian nationals, well above the 33.6 per cent EU average across all nationalities.

Indian migration into Europe is already, in the main, work migration. That is not how it is usually discussed in India, where the conversation is overwhelmingly about admissions, rankings and tuition. The data describes a different reality, one where the largest single group of Indians getting a European residence document last year did so because an employer wanted them, and it is a reality worth taking seriously if you have been assuming a degree is the only way in. It is also worth noting where the Indian numbers are not concentrated. Poland, the third largest issuer overall, granted 9,230 permits to Indians, about two per cent of its total. Volume in a country does not mean volume for your passport.

Also this week: the EU reopened the Schengen visa rulebook

On 8 September the European Commission published a call for evidence setting out the directions it is considering for a revision of the Visa Code, the regulation governing short-stay Schengen visas. The consultation runs until 6 October 2026 and the legislative proposal is expected in the first quarter of 2027, which means this is a signal of intent and nothing more concrete than that.

Three ideas in it are worth knowing. The first is a harmonised additional charge levied at EU level on top of the existing Schengen visa fee, with the revenue used to fund the common visa policy. No amount has been proposed and no increase has been decided; the current fee stays at 90 euros for adults and 45 for children aged six to eleven. The second is a formal facilitation track for what the Commission calls reliable applicants and trusted business travellers, built on verified company lists by jurisdiction, offering fast-track processing, priority appointments and fewer supporting documents. The third runs the other way, with restrictive measures aimed at countries the union judges to be cooperating poorly on migration or presenting security concerns, including suspending fast processing or multiple-entry visas for particular passports.

Here is the part that gets lost in the coverage. The Visa Code governs the short-stay visa, the one that lets you spend 90 days in any 180 in the Schengen area. It is not the visa you use to move to Europe. A student or a worker travels on a national long-stay visa issued under the law of the individual country, which each government sets for itself and which this revision does not touch. If you are reading about a possible Schengen fee rise and wondering whether it changes the cost of your Spanish student visa or your German work visa, it does not.

Also this week: the two destinations Europe gets measured against

Europe's record year did not happen in isolation, and two developments elsewhere help explain it. In the United States, a rule replacing duration of status with a fixed period of admission, capped at four years for most student and exchange visitor categories, was scheduled to take effect on 15 September. On 14 September a federal judge in Massachusetts granted a preliminary injunction postponing it and prohibiting the department from implementing it while the challenge proceeds, finding that the case against it was likely to succeed and calling the rule arbitrary and capricious. Duration of status survives for the moment, but it survives inside live litigation rather than settled law, which is a different thing from being safe.

In the United Kingdom, Home Office data released this month shows sponsored study visa applications fell 17 per cent in August compared with a year earlier, and 18 per cent across June, July and August together, the weakest run since 2022. Put the three stories side by side and the European record stops looking like an accident. Demand to study and work abroad has not fallen. It has been moving, and a good part of it has been moving toward countries that kept their doors predictable while others made theirs conditional.

What to actually do with a number like this

The wrong use of a league table is to pick a country off the top of it. Spain being first does not make Spain the easiest country for you, because a meaningful share of those 635,438 permits went to Latin American nationals using routes built on shared language and history that no other applicant can use, and another meaningful share went through arraigo, which requires years of prior presence in Spain before it opens at all. A country can be first in Europe by volume and still be a poor fit for your particular passport and profession.

The right use is narrower and more useful. This data settles an argument about which door is widest, and the answer is work, by a distance, in a year when every category except protection grew. If your plan is a study permit followed by a hope, you are entering through the narrowest door in the building and trusting that a second door opens later. Sometimes it does. It opens far more reliably for people who knew at the outset which permit they were converting into, what salary threshold or qualification recognition that conversion demanded, and whether their country allows the switch from inside its borders or sends you home to start again. Those are answerable questions, and the answer differs by country in ways that a record-breaking headline will never tell you.

Frequently asked questions

This roundup reflects reporting as of 20 September 2026. The permit figures are published statistics for calendar year 2025 and are final. The Visa Code revision is at the call for evidence stage, with no legislative text, no proposed fee amount and nothing in force. The United States ruling is a preliminary injunction in ongoing litigation, not a final decision. Confirm the current position for your own nationality, qualification and intended route before acting on any of it.