Luxembourg top for granting citizenship in EU

(CS) Luxembourg emerged as one of the EU27's top countries for granting requests by non-nationals to adopt citizenship, according to a Eurostat report.

Published on Wednesday, the report, based on 2011 data, shows that Luxembourg granted the most requests per 1,000 inhabitants. With 6.6 this number was considerably above the European average of 1.6 and the number of requests granted in Sweden (3.9) which ranked second in the EU.

However, when looking at the number of applications with a favourable outcome per 100 resident foreigners, the Grand Duchy slips down to a joint 16th place in the EU, together with Germany.

Top in that category were Hungary (9.8), Portugal (6.7) and Sweden (5.8).

This, however, could have to do more with the high number of foreigners living in the country, rather than the number of rejections of applicants.

The largest groups acquiring citizenship in Luxembourg in 2011 were identified by Eurostat as Portuguese (31.9 percent), Belgian (13.2 percent), Italian (12. percent) and French (9.2 percent).

Across the EU, the largest groups were Moroccan (8.2 percent), Turkish (6.2 percent), Ecuadorian (4.3 percent) and Indian (4 percent).

On the whole, some 783,100 people acquired the citizenship of one of the EU's member states in 2011, down by around 4 percent compared to 2010.

In Luxembourg, 3,400 requests were granted in 2011, down from 4,300 the year before.

For the full report visit ec.europa.eu