Portugal was the fifth European Union country to grant most citizenships to foreigners in 2011, having granted 5.2 citizenships for every 100 foreign residents.
Most of them were granted to Brazilian residents (23%), followed by Cape-Verdeans (15.1%), Ukrainians (10.1%) and Moldovans (10%), showing a greater tendency to grant citizenship to foreigners from former Portuguese colonies.
Ranking higher than Portugal were only Hungary (9.8 citizenships granted per 100 resident foreigners), Poland (6.7), Sweden (5.8) and Malta (5.3).
The data came from a report issued by Eurostat, the statistical office of the European Union.
It read that in 2011 approximately 783,100 people acquired citizenship of an EU member state – a 4% drop compared to the previous year.
Out of the total, most came from Africa (26% of the total number of citizenships acquired), while the remaining came from Asia (23%), non-European Union countries (19%), North and South America (17%) or other EU countries (11%).
But Portugal stood out for another reason as well. Portuguese people were also the fourth largest nationality to acquire citizenship in another EU country – nearly 7,000 – only behind Romanians (26,000), Poles (11,000) and Italians (7,500).
