More than 14 million workers are mobile within the European Union.

Omissions

• The Commission's headline figure is 'around 14 million EU citizens who live or work long term in another Member State', which is a subset of all mobile workers; adding the 1.9 million cross-border workers and 3.64 million posted workers cited in the same source pushes the total to roughly 19-20 million, so the 'more than 14 million' figure is a conservative understatement.
• A narrower, differently-defined national statistic (Destatis) counts 7.3 million EU citizens aged 15+ working in another EU Member State in 2025; this measures employed persons of foreign EU citizenship rather than all mobile workers/residents and is therefore not directly comparable.

Sources

• PrimaryEuropean Commission — Communication on the Fair Labour Mobility Package (DG Employment, Social Affairs and Inclusion)'Today, around 14 million EU citizens live or work long term in another Member State, alongside 1.9 million cross-border workers and 3.64 million posted workers.' Footnote 3 defines mobile workers as 'individuals working in a Member State other than the country of origin, independent of the duration of that work and the country of residence. This includes posted workers, seasonal workers and frontier (cross-border) workers.'
• PrimaryStatistisches Bundesamt (Destatis) — Labour mobility'In 2025, a total of 7.3 million EU citizens aged 15 and over worked in other EU countries, in which they had not acquired citizenship.' (based on Eurostat database lfsa_pganws; last update 21.04.2026)