According to data collected by Eurostat, in 2020, Portugal registered the 2nd highest naturalisation rate of foreign citizens in the European Union.
The naturalisation rate represents the ratio between all the people who acquired citizenship of a given country over the course of a year, over the number of foreign citizens residing in that same country at the beginning of that year.
Portugal registered a naturalisation rate of 5.5% in 2020, only surpassed by Sweden with 8.6%, that is, in Portugal in 2020, 5.5 citizenships were granted per 100 foreign citizens residing in the country. On the other side of the table were countries such as Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, with the latter registering the lowest naturalisation rate, with only 0.2%. The community average was 2%.
It is also worth noting the increase, compared to 2019, in the number of citizenships granted. From 2019 to 2020, over 729,000 people managed to obtain the nationality of an EU Member State where they resided, which represents an increase of 3% compared to the previous year. The countries that contributed the most to these figures were: Spain (+27,300 citizenships), the Netherlands (+21,800), Sweden (+16,000) and Portugal (+11,000). The countries that obtained the greatest reductions in this area, we have: France (-23,300 citizenships), Germany (-20,800) and Belgium (-6,700).
Regarding the origin of the “new European citizens” of the year 2020, the podium goes to Morocco (68,900 citizens), Syria (50,200 citizens) and Albania (40,500 citizens).
