European Union's statistics agency, Eurostat, showed on Tuesday that the European Union's population has reached the half-a-billion mark at the beginning of the year. And immigration is the considered as the main reason behind the increase in population as compared to the births and deaths. The EU gained an additional 1.4 million residents, with 900,000 immigrants. Luxembourg welcomed the most new inhabitants per capita (13.2 per 1,000), followed by Sweden (6.7) and Slovenia (5.8). Irland, ahead of Cyprus and France are registered as the highest natural growth populated places.