MOZOM-analyse

Not ethnicity, but nationality: official figures reveal a hard divide in European crime data

Eurostat, BKA, Statistics Denmark, CBS, Brå, SSB, GOV.UK/MoJ, SSMSI, INE, BFS, BMI Oostenrijk en het Italiaanse ministerie van Justitie Migration 31 juli 2026 om 19:20

Type: Analyse Author: the editorial team Published: 31 juli 2026 om 19:20 Report a correction

Editorial caricature of three generic burglars near European maps, charts and police data as an illustration of crime statistics by nationality.

Source: Eurostat, BKA, Statistics Denmark, CBS, Brå, SSB, GOV.UK/MoJ, SSMSI, INE, BFS, BMI Oostenrijk en het Italiaanse ministerie van Justitie
MOZOM headline: Not ethnicity, but nationality: official figures reveal a hard divide in European crime data
Original headline: Eurostat does not measure race, but citizenship; that table still makes the migration and security debate concrete
Author: the editorial team
Date: 31 juli 2026 om 19:20
Subject: MOZOM compares European crime data by citizenship with national sources on origin, country of birth, parents and residence status, and examines what the figures do and do not prove.

Research Open HTML chart Interactive chart based on the Eurostat figures; sources are listed below. Research Download CSV data Reusable table with MOZOM's 2024 Eurostat calculation. Research Download JSON data Structured dataset with the same calculation and source URLs.

Summary of the original report

MOZOM's Eurostat calculation compares the share of foreign or stateless residents with the share of foreign suspects, convicted persons and prisoners. In Germany, foreign or stateless residents account for 14.5 percent of the population, but 41.8 percent of suspects and 40.8 percent of convicted persons. In Austria it is 19.5 percent residents versus 46.7 percent suspects. In Belgium: 13.8 versus 39.4. In Spain: 13.4 versus 37.7. In Denmark: 10.9 versus 33.6. That is not marginal. At the same time it is not a total proof: in France, Germany, Spain and Denmark, national citizens remain the majority of suspects in absolute numbers. The Netherlands and Sweden do not provide a usable Eurostat suspect split by citizenship, but publish origin data themselves. CBS shows that in the Netherlands in 2023 the highest suspect rate was among people born in the Netherlands with two foreign-born parents: 2.8 percent, compared with 0.6 percent among people of Dutch origin. Brå shows in Sweden that foreign-born persons and Swedish-born persons with foreign-born parents are registered as suspects more often than people with two Swedish-born parents. The conclusion: calling this topic racism ignores official data; presenting it as ethnic destiny overstates what the data can prove.

Own source research: from Eurostat to origin data

MOZOM retrieved three Eurostat datasets: suspects, prosecuted and convicted persons by citizenship; prisoners by citizenship; and population by citizenship. For each country, MOZOM calculated the share of foreign or stateless residents and the share of foreign suspects, convicted persons and prisoners. A suspect split was available for 31 Eurostat areas; in 23 of them it could be reliably paired with a population share for foreign or stateless residents. The highest ratios between foreign suspect share and foreign resident share were found in Croatia, Slovakia, Greece, Denmark and Germany. National sources were then checked for data closer to origin: CBS uses country of birth and parents, Statistics Denmark uses ancestry, Brå uses Swedish-born or foreign-born parents, SSB uses immigrant background, England and Wales publish ethnicity data, while France, Spain, Austria, Switzerland and Italy mainly publish nationality or residence status.

The question is often asked too crudely

The term original population may be politically understandable, but it is not a fixed European statistical category. Turning it into a skin-colour or race chart moves away from the official data. But pretending that nationality and origin do not matter also moves away from the data. The honest formulation is sharper: in many European countries, non-citizens and some groups with a migration background are clearly overrepresented in police and justice statistics. That is a policy fact, not permission to treat whole population groups as suspects.

What the figures do not prove

Eurostat uses nationality, not ethnicity. A naturalised offender counts as a national citizen, even if his parents were born abroad. A foreign suspect can be a tourist, cross-border worker, asylum seeker, labour migrant, illegally staying person or permanent resident. The denominator problem matters: Eurostat divides foreign suspects by the foreign resident population, while some suspects do not live in the country. Suspects are also not convicted persons. The hard conclusion is therefore not that European crime is mainly committed by non-original residents. The hard conclusion is that the nationality and origin divide is too large to moralise away.

Possible message behind the news

The visible message of many official sources is caution. The critical counter-reading is that caution is sometimes used to avoid naming the hard pattern. The reader therefore sees both the hard pattern and the limit of the conclusion: overrepresentation is visible, collective guilt is not proven.

Neutral conclusion

This analysis does not build a race chart or a collective guilt chart. It shows what official sources do show: nationality, residence status and origin are visibly linked to overrepresentation in many European crime statistics. That is not a final answer, but it is a starting point citizens may see. A mature migration and security debate therefore starts neither with looking away nor with abuse. It starts with tables that everyone can check.