Citizenship Acquisitions in Europe by Country (2024)
Acquisitions of citizenship across 33 European countries in 2024: Germany naturalised 288.7 thousand people, the most in Europe. Eurostat data.
Data
| # | Country | thousand people | Change vs 2023 |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Germany | 288.7 | +88.9 |
| 2 | Spain | 252.5 | +12.3 |
| 3 | Italy | 217.4 | +3.9 |
| 4 | France | 103.7 | +6.4 |
| 5 | Sweden | 63 | -4.8 |
| 6 | Belgium | 60.1 | +4.9 |
| 7 | Netherlands | 59 | +2.1 |
| 8 | Switzerland | 39.9 | -1.3 |
| 9 | Norway | 27.5 | -9.9 |
| 10 | Ireland | 24.1 | +5.8 |
| 11 | Portugal | 20.6 | +3.6 |
| 12 | Poland | 16.1 | +4.3 |
| 13 | Greece | 14.3 | +1 |
| 14 | Austria | 13 | +1.1 |
| 15 | Finland | 11.5 | -0.7 |
| 16 | Denmark | 6.3 | +2.9 |
| 17 | Luxembourg | 5.9 | +0.1 |
| 18 | Czechia | 5.8 | +0.4 |
| 19 | Romania | 4 | -8.5 |
| 20 | Georgia | 3.6 | n/a |
| 21 | Cyprus | 2.8 | -0.5 |
| 22 | Hungary | 1.7 | -0.7 |
| 23 | Slovenia | 1.7 | unchanged |
| 24 | Malta | 1.1 | +0.3 |
| 25 | Latvia | 1.1 | unchanged |
| 26 | Albania | 0.9 | -0.5 |
| 27 | Slovakia | 0.9 | +0.3 |
| 28 | Croatia | 0.8 | +0.1 |
| 29 | Estonia | 0.8 | -0.3 |
| 30 | Iceland | 0.6 | unchanged |
| 31 | Bulgaria | 0.3 | -0.1 |
| 32 | Liechtenstein | 0.2 | unchanged |
| 33 | Lithuania | 0.1 | unchanged |
About this Dataset
Germany granted citizenship to 288.7 thousand people in 2024, more than any other European country, with Spain at 252.5 thousand and Italy at 217.4 thousand. The charted panel total was 1,220.8 thousand, +116.5 thousand on the year.
Naturalisation counts lag migration by roughly the length of the residence requirement. The numbers being granted now reflect who arrived five to ten years ago, and which laws changed in between.
The count is not a measure of how open a country is. It mixes three quite different routes: residence-based naturalisation, which is what most people mean by the term; acquisition through marriage; and entitlement by descent, which requires no residence at all and accounts for a large share of Italian, Hungarian and Romanian grants. Read against the size of each country's foreign resident population, the ordering changes substantially — Sweden and Portugal naturalise a far higher proportion of their foreign residents than France or Italy do.
Every row is the figure published for 2024; no value is carried over from an adjacent year to fill a gap. North Macedonia and Turkey have not published a 2024 figure and are left out rather than carried forward from an older year. The chart tracks a fixed panel of 29 countries: those reporting in every year from 2007. The line therefore moves because the countries moved, not because the sample changed.
Country pages: Germany · Spain · Italy · France · Sweden · Belgium · Netherlands · Switzerland · Norway · Ireland · Portugal · Poland · Greece · Austria · Finland · Denmark · Luxembourg · Czechia · Romania · Georgia · Cyprus · Hungary · Slovenia · Malta · Latvia · Albania · Slovakia · Croatia · Estonia · Iceland · Bulgaria · Liechtenstein · Lithuania