Sweden boasts the highest naturalisation rate in the EU – i.e. the number of persons that acquire the citizenship of the country in which they’re living – with a rate of 7.9 per 100 non-national residents in 2023, Eurostat data has found.
According to the data, other countries to report high naturalisation rates include Romania (5.9) and Italy (4.1), while the three Baltic states recorded the lowest naturalisation rates – Lithuania (0.1), Latvia (0.4) and Estonia (0.5).
Some 1.1 million people acquired the citizenship of the EU country in which they lived in 2023, which was an increase of around 6.1%, or 60,200 people, on the previous year.
Highest proportion of new citizenships
Spain granted the highest number of new citizenships, with 240,000, or 22.9% of the EU total. This was followed by Italy (213,600; 20.3%) and Germany (199,800; 19.0%).
Non-EU citizens made up the majority of those granted citizenship, accounting for 87.6% of the total, while 10.7% were citizens of another EU country.
Syrian nationals represented the largest group of new EU citizens, with 107,500 new citizenships granted, followed closely by Moroccan nationals at 106,500. Albanians made up the third largest group, with 44,400 granted citizenship.
Other countries to account for a high proportion of new EU citizens included Romania, Venezuela, Brazil, Ukraine, India, Türkiye and Argentina.
As Eurostat noted, ‘The naturalisation rate is the ratio of the number of persons who acquired the citizenship of a country during a calendar year over the stock of non-national residents in the same country at the beginning of the year. The naturalisation rate should be used with caution, however, as the numerator includes all modes of acquisition and not just naturalisation of eligible residing non-nationals and the denominator includes all non-nationals and not just the relevant population, i.e. those non-nationals who are eligible for naturalisation.’ Read more here.
