Vast majority of Maltese citizenship recipients hailed from Russia

The largest group of foreign nationals acquiring Maltese citizenship in 2015 was Russians, who made up 40.4% of people citizenship recipients for that year.

British and Ukrainian citizens followed, making up to 7.7% and 3.9% Maltese citizenship recipients.

In total, 646 people were granted Maltese citizenship in 2015, out of which 19% were citizens of other EU member states.

Across the EU, around 840,000 persons acquired citizenship of a member state in 2015, marking a decrease from 890,000 in 2014 and 980,000 in 2013.

Of the total number of persons obtaining the citizenship of one of the EU member states in 2015, 87% were non-EU citizens.

Moroccans, Albanians, Turks, Indians, Romanians, Pakistanis and Algerians represented together a third (33%) of the total number of persons who acquired citizenship of an EU member state in 2015.

86,100 Moroccans acquired EU member state citizenship, with 88% becoming Italian, Spanish or French citizens. From 48,400 Albanians, 96% acquired citizenship of Italy or Greece, while 56% of 35,000 Turkish nationals acquired German citizenship.

Romanians and Poles were the two largest groups of EU citizens acquiring citizenship of another EU member state, with 28,400 persons and 17,800 persons respectively.

When compared with the total resident population of each member state, the highest numbers of citizenship granted per 1,000 resident population in 2015 were recorded in Luxembourg (5.6 citizenships granted) and Sweden (5), ahead of Cyprus (3.9), Italy and Ireland (both 2.9). In the case of Malta, 1.5 citizenship per 1,000 resident population was granted. At EU level, 1.7 citizenships were granted per 1,000 inhabitants.

At EU level, naturalization stood at an average of 2.4 in 2015. The highest naturalisation rates were registered in Sweden with 6.7 citizenships being granted per 100 resident foreigners, followed by Portugal (5.2), Poland (3.7), Italy, the Netherlands and Finland (all 3.6). At the opposite end of the scale, naturalisation rates below one citizenship per 100 resident foreigners were recorded in Estonia and Slovakia (both 0.5), the Czech Republic and Latvia (both 0.6), Austria (0.7) and Lithuania (0.8).

In Malta, the ratio stood at 2.4 citizenship per 100 resident foreigners.