The European Union’s population will hit 500 million in 2009, figures from statistics agency Eurostat show.

At the beginning of this year, the population was estimated at 499.8 million, compared with 497.7 million in January 2008.

Germany is still the most populous of the 27 EU member states, with 82 million inhabitants, followed by France (64 million), the UK (62 million) and Italy (60 million).

The EU population has been rising since 2004, due to an increase in birth rates and annual immigration of up to two million people.