Eurostat: Romania granted 6,000 citizenships in 2008. 5,000 went to Moldavians

5,590 foreigners became Romania citizens in 2008, according to latest Eurostat statistics. Most citizenships went to Moldavians, namely 4,967. It’s worth mentioning that the period of time included in the European statistics is before Romania passed the new citizenship law and setting up the centres for receiving citizenship request files, opened especially for Moldavians. At the same time, 2,857 Romanians gave up their original citizenship in favour of becoming Italian and 5,535 Romanians gave it up for the Hungarian citizenship.

Romania granted almost 6,000 citizenships in 2008, in comparison with 30 in 2007, according to Eurostat statistics. Many Moldavians became, naturally, Romanian citizens – almost 5,000. There were also 85 Americans and 54 Turks who took the Romanian citizenship. Eurostat presents the first three most numerous national groups to get Romanian citizenship.

At the same time, there were also Romanians to give up their citizenship in favour of other nationalities. This is the case of 5.535 Romanians who became Hungarians – the largest national group to obtain citizenship in Hungary, out of 8,100 people in 2008. In Italy, 3,000 Romanians gave up their nationality for the local one, ranking third in the ethnical groups top to claim Italian citizenship, after Moroccans and Albanians.

At the EU level, 696,000 foreigners became Union citizens. Most of them are Moroccans – nearly 64,000; Turks – around 50,000; and Ecuadorians – approximately 30,000. France granted the largest number of citizenships – 137,000, followed by Great Britain – 129,000 9one of the countries that worries that the change in the Romanian citizenship law – in 2009 – would bring an increase of Moldavian immigrants to the UK), and Germany – 94,000, which granted, together, over 50% of the total number of EU citizenships grated to foreigners in 2008. In comparison with 2007, figures are dropping: 707,110 foreign citizens became EU nationals then.