Census to be held next year
Greece is to spend some 70 million euros to employ 60,000 people to carry out a census early next year, sources told Sunday’s Kathimerini. The European Union requires Greece to carry out another survey of its population next year as it will have been 10 years since the last one. The census is expected to be conducted over a two-week period at the end of March and beginning of April and will require citizens to fill in forms providing detailed information about themselves, such as their family status and profession. According to the 2001 census, Greece’s population was 10.9 million. In 2008, Eurostat, the EU’s statistics agency, estimated it at 11.2 million. One of the key challenges for the statisticians next year will be to accurately record the number of immigrants residing in Greece, since it is estimated that there are more than 1 million foreigners living in the country but only about half have residence permits.
