Second data released by Eurostat, 729 thousand people acquired citizenship in a Member State of the European Union. An increase of 3% compared to 2019, which is “mainly due to the increases seen in Spain (+27.300 citizenships granted or recognized than in 2019), followed by the Netherlands (+21.800), Sweden (+16.000) and Portugal (+11.000). +XNUMX)”.
The highest naturalization rate was recorded in Sweden (8,6 citizenships granted per 100 non-national residents), followed by Portugal (5,5).
On the other hand, the biggest reductions in absolute terms occurred in France (-23.300 French citizenships granted or recognized compared to 2019), Germany (-20.800) and Belgium (-6.700), according to Eurostat data, released in March 2022.
Regarding the origin of new EU citizens in 2020, the majority were from Morocco (68.900 people, of which 86% acquired the nationality of Spain, Italy or France), according to the European Statistics Institute.
Syrians followed, almost half of whom acquired Swedish citizenship, Albanians (70% acquired Italian citizenship), Romanians (40% acquired Italian citizenship) and Brazilians (24.100, 41,9% acquired Portuguese, 19,6% to Italian citizenship, 15% to Spanish and 4,8% to german, whether by naturalization or recognition).
Romanians, Poles and Italians continued to be the three largest groups of EU citizens who acquired citizenship from another EU Member State, maintaining the trend seen in 2018 and 2019.
The British, outside the European Union since 2020 because of Brexit, sought citizenship of an EU Member State mainly in France, Sweden and the Netherlands – 16.000 in total.
The full study, in English, can be read here: https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat.
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