In 2019, more than 706,000 people from non-EU countries acquired citizenship of an EU Member State, according to data released by the EU’s statistical office (Eurostat) on Monday 15 March.
These include: - 66,800 Moroccans (9% of the total) residing mainly in Spain, Italy and France; - 41,700 Albanians (6%), mainly in Italy; - 29,800 Britons (4%), 75% of whom live in Germany, Sweden and France; - 29,100 Syrians (4%), 69% of them in Sweden; - 28,600 Turks (4%), of whom 57% became Germans.
Compared to 2018, the British have moved from 7th to 3rd place in terms of the number of naturalised people.
As in the previous year, Romanians (26,600), Poles (12,600) and Italians (8,700) remained the three largest groups of EU citizens acquiring citizenship of another EU Member State in 2019.
Most new citizenships were granted by Germany (19% of the total), followed by Italy (18%), France (16%), Spain (14%) and Sweden (9%).
The naturalisation rate - the ratio of people naturalised in a country to the number of foreigners residing there - was highest in Sweden (7 citizenships granted per 100 foreign residents), Romania (4.7) and Portugal (4.4). The ratio is below 1 in ten Member States, including Lithuania (0.2), Denmark (0.3) and Estonia (0.4). (Original version in French by Mathieu Bion)