Nearly one million people became new citizens of EU member states in 2016

Albanians rank second in numbers, among the new EU citizens, after Moroccans while leaving immediately behind Indians, Pakistanis and Turks

The vast majority of the people, who became new citizens of at least one of the 28 countries of the European Unions, came from outside the block.
In 2016, 863,400 non-EU citizens acquired an EU citizenship, which Eurostat calculates as a 19 % increase with respect to 2015.
Among these, Albanians rank second in absolute numbers. They are behind the Moroccans who lead the pack and are followed by Indians, Pakistanis and Turks. These nationalities compose one third of the new EU citizens.
Africa leads as continent (30 %), Asia (21 %), the rest of Europe (outside EU-28) 20 %, and North and South America (15 %).
Only in Luxembourg and Hungary were the majority of new citizenships granted to citizens of another EU Member State. In the case of Luxembourg, Portuguese citizens accounted for the largest share, followed by French, Italian, German and Belgian citizens, in the case of Hungary EU nationals acquiring citizenship were almost exclusively Romanians.
Here is a breakdown of the original nationalities among the new EU citizens
Moroccans (101 300, or 10.2 %)
Albanians (67 500, or 6.8 %)
Indians (41 700, or 4.2 %)
Pakistanis (32 900, or 3.3 %)
Turks (32 800, or 3.3 %).
Romanians came sixth in absolute numbers (29 700) but they were already EU citizens (Romania is one of the 28 member states).

WHERE DID THEY GO?
Moroccans have preferred Spain (37 %), Italy (35 %) and France (18 %). Albanians have mostly received Italian (55 %) or Greek citizenship (42 %). As probably expected, Indians (59 %) became citizens of UK, as did half of the Pakistanis. Germany remains the main new official home for Turks (50 %).
Within EU, Romanians were mostly accepted in (13 000 persons) and Germany (3 800 persons), while “more than half of the acquisitions of citizenship by Poles were in Germany (6 700) and the United Kingdom (4 400 persons)”.

YOUNG IS KEY
Half of the new citizens were no more than 31 or less.
52 % of the total numbers were women (48% men). These countries had more men among the new citizens Belgium, Greece, Italy, Hungary, Romania, Slovenia and Slovakia. The rest of EU gave more citizenship statues to women.

THE MOST GENEROUS COUNTRIES
Italy tops the list of the EU member-states granting citizenship to foreign residents in 2016. It is followed by Spain and the United Kingdom.
Here’s a list of the top five EU countries and the respective numbers of their new citizens from 2016 (see the graph on top):
Italy (201 600 or 20 %)
Spain (150 900 or 15 %)
UK (149 400 or 15 %)
France (119 200 or 12 %)
Germany (112 800 or 11 %)
In total, these five countries gave out 74% of the new EU citizenships. (ruben.avxhiu)