The population of the EU countries has risen to 508.2 million people as of 1 January 2015.
This is up from 506.9 million the year before.
During 2014, there were 5.1 million babies born and 4.9 million deaths. The remainder of the increase, nearly one million people, came in as immigrants.
The four most populated countries in the EU are Germany (16%, 81.2 million), France (13%, 66.4 million), the UK (13%, 64.8 million) and Italy (12%, 60.8 million).
Half of all the EU’s population lives in these four countries.
Portugal, on the other hand, has 2% of the EU’s inhabitants, down from 2.1% last year. It had 10,374,800 people at the beginning of the year, a drop of 5 people in every 1,000 since January 2014.
Countries with prolonged economic problems saw their populations fall. Greece lost more than eight people in every 1,000 head of population, while Spain lost 1.6 leaving the population at 46,400,000, the Eurostat figures said.
But it was Cyprus which saw the greatest exodus with nearly 13 out of every 1,000 of its population gone through death or migration within just one year.
The greatest increases were in Luxembourg, Sweden, Malta, Austria and Denmark.
Portugal joined Italy, Greece and Germany for having the lowest birth rates in the EU. The rate in Portugal, 7.9%, was the lowest in the EU.
