The new wave of mass immigration that has swept the country is being reflected in the high number of citizenships that Albanians are obtaining in one of the European Union countries.
The latest Eurostat data shows that Albanian citizens were granted 48,000 citizenships by the EU countries where they lived, ranking them third, after Syria and Morocco, two countries with a much higher population than Albania.
Italy is the country that has granted the most citizenship to Albanians, with 66% of the total, followed by Greece, with 22.3, Germany 6.6%, Sweden 1.6% and others 3.8%.
In Greece, Albanians rank first in obtaining citizenship, and in Italy as well.
Europe
Eurostat announced that in 2024, almost 1.2 million people acquired the citizenship of the EU country where they lived, an increase of 11.6% (+122,700 people) compared to 2023. The number of citizenships granted increased by 54.5% compared to 2014, when a total of 762,100 citizenships were granted.
The largest share of these new citizenships was granted by Germany (288,700; 24.5% of the EU total), Spain (252,500; 21.4%) and Italy (217,400; 18.5%).
The majority of beneficiaries (88.0%) were from non-EU countries, while citizens of other EU countries accounted for 10.6%.
In 2024, as in the previous year, Syrian nationals constituted the largest group of new EU citizens, with 110,100 granted citizenship. Moroccan nationals were the second largest group, with 97,100 granted citizenship, followed by Albanians (48,000).
The naturalization rate indicates the number of people who acquire citizenship in a country during a year, relative to the total number of non-citizen residents at the beginning of that year.
In 2024, Sweden recorded the highest naturalization rate among EU countries, with 7.5 citizenships granted for every 100 non-citizen residents, followed by Italy (4.1) and Spain and the Netherlands (each with 3.9).
At the other end of the scale, the lowest naturalization rates per 100 non-citizen residents were recorded in Lithuania (0.1), Bulgaria and Estonia (each with 0.3)./Monitor.al/
