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

Italians person been voting complete nan past mates of days connected whether to slash citizenship residency requirements for non-EU immigrants from 10 years to five, but misinformation has swirled astir nan vote.

The country's Minister of Infrastructure and Transport Matteo Salvini and others person claimed that Italy is nan European state that grants nan astir citizenship applications, for example.

"The astir vulnerable (referendum) is nan 1 that would widen citizenship to hundreds of thousands of group indiscriminately, pinch Italy being nan number 1 European state successful position of nan granting of citizenship each year," he said successful May.

However, it's not existent that Italy approves nan astir citizenship requests twelvemonth connected year, and we tin cheque this by looking astatine nan astir caller numbers from Eurostat.

They show that successful 2023, Spain granted nan astir citizenships, sitting astatine much than 240,000. That accounts for 22.9% of nan full number of citizenships granted successful nan EU.

Italy came successful 2nd spot pinch 214,000, past Germany pinch 200,000, France pinch 97,000 and Sweden pinch 68,000.

The UK granted 202,000 citizenships successful 2023, according to British authorities figures.

The leader committee changes erstwhile nan number of citizenships granted is analysed successful narration to a country's population.

In this instance, Luxembourg classed first successful nan EU successful 2023, pinch 8.8 citizenships per 1000 people, followed by Sweden (6.4), Spain (5), Belgium (4.7), and Italy (3.6), which scraped into nan apical five.

Slovakia, Bulgaria and Lithuania assistance nan fewest citizenships per 1,000 people, according to Eurostat, each of them sitting astatine beneath 0.5.

Eurostat besides calculates nan naturalisation complaint for each country. It compares nan number of citizenships granted to nan non-national resident population.

Under this metric, nan highest naturalisation complaint was successful Sweden (7.9), past Romania (5.9) and Italy (4.1).

"In 2023, successful nan EU arsenic a whole, 2.6 accustomed residents per 100 resident non-national citizens were granted citizenship," Eurostat said.

It’s true, therefore, that Italy consistently ranks among nan highest by full number of citizenships granted, and has fixed nan astir successful immoderate years, specified arsenic successful 2022 and 2020.

In nan former, Italy again naturalised astir 214,000 people, and successful nan latter, it handed retired citizenship to immoderate 132,000.

Nevertheless, arsenic things guidelines and arsenic nan results of nan referendum travel in, Italy has immoderate of nan strictest citizenship requirements successful Europe, pinch immigrants needing to unrecorded location for 10 years earlier officially becoming Italian.

Others, specified arsenic Switzerland, Lithuania and Slovenia, person akin stipulations successful place, while a sizeable number of European countries inquire that immigrants unrecorded location for only 5 years. For example, Finland, France, Ireland and Portugal.

While Italy has been mulling reducing its naturalisation requirements, immoderate countries are considering going aliases person already gone nan different way.

The UK authorities has announced that it intends to bring successful caller rules raising nan magnitude of clip an migrant has to unrecorded successful nan state earlier they tin use for citizenship from 5 to 10 years, unless they tin show "a existent and lasting publication to nan system and society".

Meanwhile, Belgium precocious accrued nan costs of applying for citizenship from €150 to €1,000.