France refused entry to 200 Britons and 190 Americans in 2025
More than 1,100 UK citizens were found to be illegally present in the EU, official data reveals
French officials issued more than 100,000 orders for non-nationals to leave the country
Victor Velter/Shutterstock
France refused entry to 200 Britons in 2025, making it the country where the highest proportion of UK citizens were blocked from entering the EU.
A total of 1,240 Britons were refused entry to the EU last year, states the bloc’s statistical body Eurostat.
After France, the next largest countries for refusal were the Netherlands (125) Italy and Poland (80), Portugal (75), as well as Greece and Sweden (70).
The vast majority of Britons refused entry to the EU were done so at airports, as opposed to sea ports or physical land borders.
A total of 965 Americans were also refused entry to the EU, with France (190 cases) being the largest nation to block entry followed by Italy (135) Switzerland (95), the Netherlands (90) and Ireland (80).
Overall, 132,600 people of non-EU nationality were refused entry to the bloc at border crossings.
Ukraine (26,975) was the highest, followed by Albania (12,430), Moldova (11,660), Colombia (6,565) and Turkey (5,635).
The UK ranked 18th out of all countries, ahead of the US (965 denials), Canada (205 denials), and Australia (75 denials).
France ranks high for refusals
While specific reasons for refusal were not given for each case, overall the most common reasons for preventing people from entering the EU in 2025 were:
Purpose and condition of stay not justified (30.3% of cases)
Overstaying the 90/180 day rule (16.9%)
No valid visa or residence permit (15.3%)
An alert over their entry being issued (13.3%)
The person not holding a valid travel document (8.7%)
For Britons and Americans, it is most likely that the largest single reason for being refused entry was falling foul of the 90/180 day rules, and incorrectly calculating how much time they had spent in the bloc before returning.
France was the second-largest EU country to issue entry refusals to travellers (12,210) behind Poland (28,960), although the latter’s statistics are heavily skewed by its land border with Ukraine.
Whereas more than 90% of Poland’s total refusals were recorded at land borders, in France the vast majority of refusals (82.6%) came at airports.
More than 1,000 Britons illegally present in EU
The data set also included information on the number of people found to be ‘illegally present’ within the EU, with 719,395 such cases recorded in 2025. It is unclear what is meant exactly by ‘illegally present’ in this context.
The UK however accounted for only 1,125 cases across the entire EU (individual breakdowns of which member state citizens were illegally living in are not given).
In contrast, Algerians (70,905), Afghans (42,635), Moroccans (39,030), Ukrainians (36,800) and Bangladeshis (34,355) were the most common.
Australia (150), the US (920) and Canada (210) were among some of the lowest countries with citizens illegally present in the EU.
France was the second-largest EU country where people were found to be illegally present (22.2% of all cases) behind Germany (23.4%).
Put another way by Eurostat, 2.3 of every 1,000 people in France were found to be living in the country illegally.
France issued the most orders to leave the country (known as an OFTF) out of any EU nation. It issued 137,550 in 2025, just over 25% of all such demands across the bloc.
However, 58.6% of third-nationals returned to their origin country from France on a voluntary basis, with 41.4% being forcibly returned. This largely mirrors EU averages (59.4% voluntary, 40.6% forced).
Only Italy responded that all 100% of third-nation returns were forcibly made, with Lithuania, Czechia, and Latvia all responding that more than 90% of their returns were voluntary (although totals were significantly smaller here than in France).
In France, 71.9% of all returns were assisted, meaning “national or international organisations… provide reintegration support for returnees,” which in some cases are funded in part by the EU.
For its part, Italy assisted all 100% of third-nationals, despite forcing them to leave.
Full information can be found here on the Eurostat website.
