00:00Where in Europe grants the most citizenships?
00:05Italians have been voting over the past couple of days
00:08on whether to slash citizenship residency requirements
00:11for non-EU immigrants from 10 years to 5,
00:15but misinformation has swirled about the vote.
00:17Take these comments from Transport Minister Matteo Salvini
00:20and others who claim that Italy is the country
00:23that grants the most citizenship applications every year.
00:30However, it's not true that Italy approves
00:44the most citizenship requests year on year,
00:46and we can check this by looking at the most recent numbers from Eurostat.
00:50They show that in 2023, Spain granted the most citizenships,
00:54sitting at more than 240,000.
00:57Italy came in second place with 214,000,
01:01then Germany with 200,000, France 97,000, and Sweden with 68,000.
01:06The UK granted 202,000 citizenships in 2023,
01:10according to British government figures.
01:12Things change, though, when we look at the citizenships granted
01:15in relation to a country's population.
01:17Here, Luxembourg came first in 2023,
01:20with 8.8 citizenships per 1,000 people,
01:22followed by Sweden, Spain, Belgium, and Italy scraping into the top five.
01:27It's true, though, that Italy does consistently rank among the highest
01:31by total number of citizenships granted,
01:33and has sometimes given the most in some years,
01:36such as in 2022 and 2020.
01:39As things stand, Italy are some of the strictest citizenship requirements in Europe,
01:43with immigrants needing to live there for 10 years
01:45before officially becoming Italian.
01:47Others, such as Switzerland, Lithuania, and Slovenia,
01:50have similar stipulations in place.
01:53For more fact-checks, head to our website, euronews.com.
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