World's Second Albanians for Gaining Citizenship in EU Countries

Albanians are the second in the world, after the Moroccans, to have managed to take over the citizenship of the European Union (BE) in 2016.

There are 67,500 Albanians who obtained citizenship in one of the EU countries in 2016, where 97 percent of them received the citizenship of Italy, or Greece, of this 54.7 percent have received Italian citizenship, 42.3 percent Greek and 0.5 percent Belgian, says the European Statistics Agency (Eurist) report.

On the list are Kosovars rank 28th with 9,500 persons who have managed to take citizenship. 41.6 percent of them have obtained citizenship with one of the EU countries from Germany, 37.7 percent from Italy and 7.5 percent from Sweden.

In 2016, about 995 people have gained citizenship in an EU member state, from 841 grand in 2015 and 889 thousand in 2014. Of the total number of persons who gained citizenship in one of the EU member states in 2016, 12 per cent were former citizens of another EU member state, while most were not EU citizens, or were without citizenship.

The largest group to gain citizenship in an EU member state, where they lived in 2016, were the citizens of Morocco with 101,300 persons, 89 percent of whom have obtained citizenship from Spain, Italy, or France, ranking in front of Albania's citizens at 67,500, India with 4,700 percent, more than 60 percent have received British citizenship, Turkey with 32,800, almost half of it gained German citizenship, Romania 29,700, 44 percent have acquired Italian citizenship, and Ukraine with 24 thousand, 60 percent have obtained German citizenship, Romania, Portugal, or Italy.

Moroccons, Albanians, Indians, Pakistanis, Turks, Romanians and Ukrainians jointly represented about a third or 33 percent of the total number of persons who gained the citizenship of an EU member state in 2016. Romanians with 29,700 persons and Poles with 19,800 were the two largest groups of EU citizens to gain citizenship of another EU member state. /Telegraphy/