Russians and Saudis form bulk of new Maltese citizens

In 2017, around 825,000 persons acquired citizenship of an EU member states, down from 995,000 in 2016 and 841,000 in 2015.

Malta granted citizenship to 1,973 nationals, mainly Russian (23.5%), Saudi Arabia (17.3%), and the United Kingdom (9.9%).

Malta registered one of the largest relative increases in new citizens at 32% over 2016.

Moroccans, Albanians, Indians, Turks, Romanians, Pakistanis, Poles and Brazilians represented together about a third (34%) of the total number of persons who acquired citizenship of an EU state in 2017.

Romanians (25,000 persons), Poles (22,000) and Britons (15,000) were the three largest groups of EU citizens acquiring citizenship of another EU Member State.

The number of UK nationals acquiring citizenship of another EU member state more than doubled in 2017.

The largest relative increase compared with 2016 was for citizens of the United Kingdom (from 6,555 people in 2016 to 14,911 in 2017, or +127%), Luxembourg (from 57 to 109, or +91%), Malta (from 80 to 148, or +85%), Saudi Arabia (from 277 to 507, or +83%) and France (from 3,501 to 5,778, or +65%).

The naturalisation rate is the ratio of the number of persons who acquired the citizenship of a country during a year over the stock of foreign residents in the same country at the beginning of the year. In 2017, the highest naturalisation rates were registered in Sweden (8.2 citizenships granted per 100 resident foreigners), Romania (5.9) and Finland (5.0), followed by Portugal (4.5), Greece (4.2) and Cyprus (3.9).