A record-high number of foreign nationals lived in Germany in 2018, having gone up by around 292,000 to 10.9 million, including 27,772 Croatians who moved to Germany in 2018, the national statistical office in the city of Wiesbaden said on Monday.

The number of Croatian nationals residing in Germany rose by 27,772 in the period between 31 December 2017 and 31 December 2018, which is a considerably smaller number than the year before, when the number of Croatians in Germany rose by 35,295.

2018 was the first year since Croatia’s accession to the EU in 2013 in which the number of Croatian immigrants in Germany dropped on the year.

At the end of last year, 395,665 Croatians lived in Germany, 170,694 more than at the end of 2012, the last year before Croatia joined the EU.

Most Croatian nationals living in Germany, or 117,660, lived in the federal state of Baden-Wuerttemberg.

In terms of the number of foreigners in Germany, Croatia comes after Turkey, Poland, Italy, Syria and Romania.