evidence: Shortly before the 2016 referendum on EU membership, EU citizens made up the majority of all net migration to the UK (excluding British citizens). Depending on the data source used, EU citizens contributed between 59% and 77% of estimated net migration in the year ending March 2015. This high share was unusual by historical standards and partly resulted from temporary factors: Romanian and Bulgarian citizens receiving full access to the UK labour market in 2014 and migration from Southern European countries where youth unemployment was high due to the Eurozone crisis. [...] Estimates of EU citizen migration come from the RAPID tax and benefits database, which is not designed to measure migration flows. In the 2023 estimates, both immigration and emigration of EU citizens are relatively high at 126,000 and 202,000, respectively. The EU immigration estimate is much higher than the number of visas granted to EU citizens (52,500 in 2023, excluding visitors, transit and frontier workers who do not live in the UK). ONS analysis suggests that most of the EU citizens migrating to the UK during this period were not on visas but already held status under the EU Settlement Scheme (EUSS). Full data on the migration of people with EUSS status are not currently published.