Italy is the country that offers the most citizenship in Europe

Italy is the country that has granted the most citizenship to foreigners in recent years.   

According to a study by the nation's National Statistics Institute (Istat), one in five people in Europe who obtained European citizenship in 2015 obtained it in Italy.

According to the survey, the “new Italians” are mostly Albanians (19,7%), Moroccans (18,2%) and Romanians (8,1%), a nationality that is part of the European Union, but does not belong to the Schengen Area, Europe's free movement treaty. Italy granted 178.035 citizenships out of the more than 890 given since 2014 and the 980 in 2013 across the bloc.

Curiously, the second country that created the most “Europeans” was the United Kingdom, with 118 thousand concessions and which this year officially initiated the process of leaving the European Union. Right after it comes Spain, with 114.351 new citizenship applications authorized; France, with 113.608 concessions; and Germany, with 110.128 “new Germans”. In relation to the number of citizenships per inhabitant, the country that naturalized the most people was Luxembourg, followed by Sweden, Cyprus and, in fourth place, Italy and Ireland. (ANSA)