Fact check: Which country in Europe grants the most citizenships?

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Fact check: Which country in Europe grants the most citizenships?  As Italians take to the ballot box to vote in the country's citizenship referendum, EuroVerify takes a look at claims that Rome grants the most citizenship applications in Europe every year.  READ MORE : http://www.euronews.com/2025/06/09/fact-check-where-in-europe-grants-the-most-citizenships  Subscribe to our channel. Euronews is available on Dailymotion in 12 languages

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00:00Where in Europe grants the most citizenships?

00:05Italians have been voting over the past couple of days

00:08on whether to slash citizenship residency requirements

00:11for non-EU immigrants from 10 years to 5,

00:15but misinformation has swirled about the vote.

00:17Take these comments from Transport Minister Matteo Salvini

00:20and others who claim that Italy is the country

00:23that grants the most citizenship applications every year.

00:30Italy would extend citizenship to hundreds of thousands of people

00:34in an indiscriminate way with Italy,

00:37which is the first European country for a concession of citizenship every year.

00:41However, it's not true that Italy approves the most citizenship requests year on year,

00:46and we can check this by looking at the most recent numbers from Eurostat.

00:50They show that in 2023 Spain granted the most citizenships,

00:54sitting at more than 240,000.

00:57Italy came in second place with 214,000,

01:01then Germany with 200,000,

01:03France 97,000,

01:04and Sweden with 68,000.

01:06The UK granted 202,000 citizenships in 2023,

01:10according to British government figures.

01:12Things change, though,

01:13when we look at the citizenships granted in relation to a country's population.

01:17Here, Luxembourg came first in 2023,

01:20with 8.8 citizenships per 1,000 people,

01:23followed by Sweden, Spain, Belgium,

01:25and Italy scraping into the top five.

01:27It's true, though,

01:28that Italy does consistently rank among the highest

01:31by total number of citizenships granted,

01:33and has sometimes given the most in some years,

01:36such as in 2022 and 2020.

01:39As things stand,

01:40Italy are some of the strictest citizenship requirements in Europe,

01:43with immigrants needing to live there for 10 years

01:45before officially becoming Italian.

01:47Others, such as Switzerland, Lithuania,

01:49and Slovenia have similar stipulations in place.

01:53For more fact-checks,

01:54head to our website,

01:55euronews.com.

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