This time around we took a look at the 10 easiest countries to gain citizenship in EU, trying to see where you’d have an easier time if you wanted to move. When you want to move abroad, you have to take into account a long list of things, including whether or not getting citizenship in that particular country is a viable possibility or not.
Now, going back to the basics – what does it mean to have citizenship? Well, it’s the status of a person that is recognized under a country’s law as being a legal member of said state. This awards people more security within the country, as well as a sense of belonging, as their lives become more and more integrated with those of their neighbors and colleagues.
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Being a citizen comes with rights and duties; it’s a social contract according to old concepts. The right to vote, for instance, is at the same time a social duty. Being a citizen is usually seen as being an active participant in all aspects of the state’s life.
However, you don’t have to be a citizen to live in another country. Upon moving to a different country you can request a right of stay, which means you have the right to reside within the country for a number of years, find a home, get a job, go to school, get social assistance, benefit from welfare and more. When you’re a citizen of a member state of the EU, you also gain the status of citizen of the Union, which gives you the right of free travel between the nations of the Union.
More often than not, when you want to become a citizen of another country, you need to have lived there for a number of years. In countries of the European Union that’s between five and ten years as a general rule.
There are multiple ways to become a citizen. One of them is, obviously, being born to parents that are already citizens of a certain state, or being born within the borders of said state. Another way is marrying a person that’s a citizen, although even in that situation you have to respect some other rules too before earning citizenship of your own.
The most common way to gain citizenship is though naturalization. This implies living in a country for a number of years, learning the language, and becoming involved in the social and cultural life of the nation. People also need to take a test to prove they have adapted to life within the country. (If you’re looking for a vacation before you get to work on picking a country in the European Union to set roots in, you might want to take a look at our list of 10 easiest countries to get laid in around the world.)
In order to create our list we took a look at all 28 member states and their legislation regarding offering citizenship to foreigners. We found quite a few similarities between them all, but they’re not identical by all means.
Out of all the nations we picked those with the shortest waiting period before you can apply for citizenship, and then ruled out the countries that don’t allow dual citizenship. We’re also going to focus on the naturalization process, since that’s where differences start occurring.
So here are the 10 easiest countries to get citizenship in EU that we’ve succeeded to find.
