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EUROPEAN UNION

COMPARE: How generous is France in granting citizenship to foreigners?

With the announcement of a new and simplified system for foreigners in France to gain French citizenship, we take a look at how generous France is in its citizenship rules compared to its EU neighbours.

COMPARE: How generous is France in granting citizenship to foreigners?

Gaining French citizenship is now a (slightly) easier process, thanks to the launch of a new online portal for applications – although the process is still long, complicated and requiring a thick (virtual) file of papers.

For foreigners there are two main routes for gaining citizenship; through residency or through marriage, although it’s also possible to get French nationality through family ties, through being born in France or through military service.

When it comes to nationality, France has one of the more generous systems in Europe – requiring five years of continuous residency, or two years if you completed higher education in France. 

But the process itself takes on average 18 months to two years, requiring a formal language exam (at B1 level) and an interview in which candidates must display their knowledge of French history, culture and politics.

READ ALSO Am I eligible for French citizenship?

So how does France compare when it comes to granting citizenship to foreigners?

According to the latest data by the EU statistical office Eurostat, in 2020 EU member states granted citizenship to 729,000 people, an increase from 706,400 in 2019 and 607,113 ten years earlier (2011).

The vast majority, around 620,600 or 85 percent, were previously citizens of a non-EU country, while 92,200 (13 percent) were nationals of another EU member state. Only Hungary and Luxembourg granted a majority of new citizenships to other EU nationals (67 percent and 63 percent respectively). Some 7.9 percent of people acquiring citizenship in the EU in 2020 were previously stateless.

Which countries grant most new citizenships? 

Five countries account for almost three quarters (74 percent) of new citizenships granted in 2020: Italy, Spain, Germany, France and Sweden. 

Italy granted citizenship to 131,800 individuals, some 18 percent of the EU’s total. The Italian statistical office Istat noted that 80 percent were resident in Italy, an increase by 26% compared to 2019, while citizenships by marriage declined by 16.5 percent. The biggest proportion of ‘new citizens’ were from Albania, Morocco and Brazil, while Romanians were the largest group among EU nationals, followed by Polish and Bulgarians. 

Spain granted citizenship to 126,300 people, or 17 percent of the EU’s total, an increase by 27,300 – the largest in Europe – over 2019. Romanians were again the largest group of new Spanish passport holders among other EU nationals, followed by Italians and Bulgarians. The largest groups of new citizens were from Morocco, Colombia and Ecuador. 

Third in the ranking, Germany granted citizenship to 111,200 people, some 15 percent of the EU’s total, but 20,900 fewer than the previous year. The three largest groups acquiring German passport among non-EU nationals were from Turkey, Syria and Iraq. Britons were fourth.

Germany usually does not allow dual citizenship for non-EU nationals, but made an exception for British citizens until 31st December 2020, the end of the post-Brexit transition period. Although Germany’s new government is to change the law to allow for dual citizenship for third-country nationals.

Romanians, Polish and Italians were the largest groups of EU citizens naturalised in Germany in 2020. 

France granted 12 percent of new citizenships in the EU: 86,500 people in 2020.

In absolute terms, this was the largest decrease in the EU, with 23,300 fewer people naturalising as French than in 2019.

Among non-EU nationals, Moroccans, Algerians and Tunisians were the largest groups acquiring French citizenship. Britons were fifth. Romanians, Portuguese and Italians were the biggest groups from the EU. France, together with Germany, has a lower naturalisation rate of foreigners than the EU average (1.7 and 1.1 per 100 foreign citizens respectively compared to the EU average of 2). 

With 80,200 new citizenships, or 11 percent of the EU’s total, Sweden recorded a growth of 16,000 compared to 2019 and was the country with the highest number of new citizens in relation to the total population.

Sweden is also the country with the highest naturalisation rate (8.6 per hundred foreign nationals compared to 2/100 across the EU). People from Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan were the largest groups naturalizing in Sweden among non-EU nationals, and Britons were fifth. Polish, Finnish and Romanians were the largest groups among EU citizens. 

As for the other countries covered by The Local, Denmark granted citizenship to more than 7,000 people, quadrupling the number who became Danish in 2019. The largest groups of new citizens originally from outside the EU were from the UK, Pakistan and Ukraine and, within the EU, from Poland, Germany and Romania. 

Austria, which allows dual citizenship in rare circumstances, recorded 9,000 new citizens, with the largest groups from Bosnia Herzegovina, Serbia and Turkey (non-EU) and Romania, Germany and Hungary (EU). 

Overall, the largest groups acquitting citizenship in EU countries in 2020 were Moroccans (68,900 persons), Syrians (50,200), Albanians (40,500), Romanians (28,700) and Brazilians (24,100). 

Britons were the first non-EU group acquiring citizenship in Denmark, Ireland and Luxembourg and among the top three in Cyprus and Latvia. However the number of Britons acquiring citizenship of an EU country decreased by 13,900 compared to the previous year.

Naturalisation in an EU member state automatically grants EU citizenship and therefore rights such as free movement and the ability to vote in that country as well as in local and European elections around the bloc.

In terms of gender, women were more likely than men to acquire citizenship (51 percent versus 49 percent), except for Bulgaria, Italy, Lithuania, Hungary, the Netherlands, Romania, Slovenia, Slovakia and Sweden. 

The median age of persons acquiring citizenship was 33 years. 36 percent of ‘new citizens’ were younger than 25, 42 percent were aged 25 to 44, and 23 percent were children below the age of 15.

Requirements 

Austria, Germany and Spain generally do not allow dual citizenship, except in some special circumstances. This means that foreign nationals who obtain the citizenship of one of these countries have to give up their nationality of origin – although Germany is in the process of changing this rule.

France and Sweden both require five consecutive years of residence in order to acquire citizenship through the residency route, but Italy, Spain, Austria and Germany all require 10 years of residence, while in Denmark people must wait for two years after acquiring their permanent residence permit, which usually takes at least eight years.

This article is published in cooperation with Europe Street News, a news outlet about citizens’ rights in the EU and the UK. 

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FRENCH CITIZENSHIP

EXPLAINED: How to use France’s new online portal for citizenship

The French government has opened a new online system for foreigners applying for citizenship. Loire-based journalist and wannabe Frenchman John Walton takes a look at how to use the new NATALI citizenship portal.

EXPLAINED: How to use France's new online portal for citizenship

Since I’ve lived in France, I’ve by and large been impressed by the country’s digital public services, especially compared with the US and UK, and that was also the case with applying for nationality using the NATALI online portal

Submitting my dossier was an entirely digital process using the new nationality portal. Since there are many pathways to apply for nationality (marriage to a French citizen, descent from a French person, and so on), the service-public.fr website has a special simulateur widget that helps you narrow down the pathway suitable to you.

There’s also a specific simulation that then provides you a list of documents based on your situation.

As a célibataire, full-time employed salarié US-UK dual national homeowner without children, born outside France, applying based solely on five years of residence with the special Brexit-flavoured titre de séjour residence permit, mine narrowed down a total 15 documents I needed to provide:

  • Passport;
  • ID photos;
  • €55 in timbre fiscale;
  • Titre de séjour;
  • Birth certificate (plus approved translations);
  • Parents’ birth and marriage certificates (plus approved translations);
  • Casier judiciaire and overseas equivalents (plus approved translations);
  • House title (acte de propriété);
  • Tax returns (avis) for 3 years;
  • P237 bordereau de situation fiscale covering 3 years (available via the tax office);
  • Certificat de travail (this is an attestation from your employer, in the standard format “I the undersigned, Mme X of company Y at address Z, certify that Mr A of address B with Sécu number C, is employed as with a CDI as a job title D since date E, and he’s not on any probation nor has he resigned) 
  • Employment contract;
  • Last 3 pay slips;
  • Pay slips for November and December of the last 3 years;
  • Language qualification to at least B1 level

READ ALSO The ultimate guide for how to get French citizenship

As it turns out I wasn’t asked for an ID photo — perhaps because I have an existing titre de séjour. Note that you will also have to input your every one of your home addresses over the last 10 years down to the specific day that you moved in and out, although no documentary evidence was required online.

Best to ensure that you have that information to hand, and I absolutely plan to bring a couple of bank statements, utility bills and similar to my assimilation interview.

The site also asked for a recent proof of address — the usual phone bill seemed to suffice. I found that the key to making this simple is collating all the information you’ll need and figuring out what accompanying documentation (or, indeed, in the case of the language tests, what exams) you can upload to provide it.

Tips for the process

You can either create a new login or use a FranceConnect login from another government service (such as the health service’s ameli.fr or the tax office’s impots.gouv.fr — I used the latter).

Pleasingly, this prefills all the information that the service already holds on you. I’m a millennial digital native with a reputation as a spreadsheet fancier, so I organised the process with a one-page spreadsheet to track the documentation. I also numbered each of the types of information, with a corresponding folder number on my computer, both for tracking and for the upload process.

That meant it took really only a few minutes to work through the submission site and upload my documents one by one. I plan to file the paper originals and printouts of these documents in a tabbed file when, fingers crossed, I’m called to the assimilation interview.

READ ALSO QUIZ: Could you pass the French citizenship interview?

I was very impressed by the uploading process: the site allows for multiple uploads at the same time (so you can select all of the payslips you’ve carefully put into a folder at once, for example) and file size limits are a very reasonable 10MB so there’s no need to resize your smartphone picture scans.

If you’re an iPhone user and have used your phone to scan pictures, they may be saved as HEIC files rather than JPGs. You’ll need to convert them (I used the Preview app on my computer) to upload.

I’d highly recommend having very clear filenames for your documentation, including translations — “certificat de naissance – mère – original”, “certificat de naissance – mère – traduction”, and so on — rather than leaving it as “IMG1234” or whatever.

I did this in French to make it as easy as possible for whoever reviews my file. Note also that where translations are needed that there is a separate upload button for translations.

I was glad that I’d had the foresight to add the word “traduction” to the names of these files!

Lessons learned

The time and effort in this process was mainly around squaring away my overseas documentation, which took a couple of months. Given that language exams are only held a few times a year, these is probably the first thing to arrange.

As someone with grade A French at A-level, who uses French on a daily basis in my local village, I popped over to my nearest centre for a morning of exams, and took the B1 level test. 

READ ALSO TEST: Is your level of French good enough for citizenship and residency?

Once you’ve booked in the language exam, start on your overseas documentation. This, especially from the UK, can be expensive, complicated and can take months.

(The UK’s police certificate website here is a particular shocker: it looks like it is a scam website, the processing time is outrageously slow and it only sends out physical forms. The French casier judiciaire version is free, online and immediate.)

By contrast, I found that securing every piece of French documentation, from the P237 form I’d never heard of, to the casier judiciaire police check that I’d never needed, all the way down to getting an electronic timbre fiscale, was easy, digitised, free and usually instantaneous.

READ ALSO Reader question: Will a criminal record stop you getting French citizenship?

Do take a good look at example documents to understand exactly what you’re being asked for before you apply for them from your country of origin, or where you may have lived over the past 10 years. For example: my parents’ marriage certificate from the UK didn’t include their dates and places of birth, just their ages at the time of marriage.

I found an excellent and very responsive local translator “agréé” (aka a translator “assermenté-e” or approved translator) from the official list of certified translators (provided). It is best to approach a translator at an early stage to ensure availability and check pricing.

They may also be helpful with some of the finer details of what documents are needed. Mine was happy to review, make minor edits to, and then stamp some earlier, non-agrée translations of several of my documents, which cut the cost somewhat.

READ ALSO How much does it cost to get French citizenship?

Overall, and certainly in contrast with the horror stories I’ve heard from friends applying for US and UK nationality, the process of submitting my dossier for French citizenship was simple, inexpensive and straightforward. If you’re not a confident online operator, you might find the website slightly overwhelming, but there is a national network of digital help points if you’re concerned. 

Now, I wait… Wish me luck at the interview.

Next steps

Submitting your dossier online is step one of applying for French citizenship, a process that takes on average between 18 months and two years. Find the full process outlined HERE

Photo: John Walton

John Walton is a joint US-UK national who lives in the département of Loire in central France. He works as a journalist specialising in travel and aviation and tweets as @thatjohn – find more of his work here

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