Fewer foreign nationals granted Maltese citizenship

The latest EU statistics on citizenships granted to both EU and non-EU nationals in Malta keep giving the lie to claims by nativists like the self-styled ‘patriots movement’ that asylum seekers from the Middle East or African countries are becoming Maltese citizens.

The naturalisation process in Malta is already a major headache for unwitting applicants and Malta – which sells citizenship for €650,000 – jealously guards granting citizenship from deserving candidates who are already taxpayers and have family here.

The latest data shows that in 2014, just 314 were given Maltese citizen, of which half were EU citizens. The main recipients were Britons (29.6%) and Italians (10.2%) followed by Russians (7%), a segment of which could be ‘customers’ of the Individual Investor Programme, Malta’s sale of passports.

That works out at 7 new citizens for every 10,000 members of the Maltese population, or 1.3 citizens for each 100 foreign resident living in Malta.

Just 890,000 persons acquired citizenship of any EU member states in 2014, down from 981,000 a year earlier.

Since 2009, more than 5 million persons in total were granted EU citizenship, 89% being non-EU citizens.

The largest group acquiring citizenship of an member state in 2014 was citizens of Morocco (92,700 persons, of which 88% acquired citizenship of Spain, Italy or France), ahead of citizens of Albania (41,000, 96% acquired citizenship of Greece or Italy), Turkey (37,500, 60% acquired German citizenship), India (35,300, almost two-thirds acquired British citizenship), and Ecuador (34,800, 94% acquired Spanish citizenship).

The highest naturalisation rates were in Spain, which welcomed 23% of all EU citizenships, or 205,900 persons, followed by Italy (129,000), the UK (125,600), Germany (110.600) and France (105,600).

When compared with the total resident population, the highest numbers of citizenship granted per 1,000 resident population were recorded in Luxembourg (5.8 citizenships granted), Ireland (4.6), Sweden (4.5) and Spain (4.4). At EU level, 1.8 citizenships were granted per 1,000 inhabitants. Malta's was 0.7 per 1,000.