Nearly one million people acquired citizenship of an EU country in 2013.
This was an increase of 20% over the previous year, representing about 163,000 individuals.
The vast majority (89%) had come from countries outside Europe, with the largest group being Moroccans (86,000) who were granted passports from Spain, Italy or France.
People from India (48,300) were the second largest group and they found citizenship predominately in the UK, but also in Italy and Ireland. The third largest segment was from Turkey (46,500) who mostly acquired German citizenship.
Romanians (23,000) and Poles (18,000) were the two largest groups of people who were already part of the EU but acquired citizenship of another EU country.
Romanians became citizens of Hungary, Italy and Germany in particular while Poles were granted it by the UK, Germany and Sweden.
Portugal granted citizenships, mostly to people from Brazil, Ukraine and Cape Verde as well as from other countries. In total, nearly 25,000 people became Portuguese citizens in 2013.
Portuguese citizens also acquired passports from other EU nations. Luxembourg gave citizenship to more Portuguese than people from any other country.
Numerically, the country granting the most citizenships in the year was Spain – nearly 226,000 – followed by the UK with 207,500 new passport holders. Together these two countries accounted for nearly half of all those becoming EU citizens in 2013.
But in 2014, the UK government tightened up requirements and granted fewer than 126,000 new citizenships.
