Only 4 in 10,000 Brits chose EU citizenship in year before Brexit, says EU

Out of over 700,000 new EU citizens in 2019, less than 30,000 were British

© Brexit Facts4EU.Org 2021

99.96% of British people were happy to stay British – a Facts4EU.Org analysis

Latest official EU figures for 2019: Out of a total UK population of 66,647,112, only 29,842 British citizens (0.04%) decided to opt for citizenship of an EU27 country. This represents only 4 out of every 10,000 Brits.

More than twice as many Moroccans than British people applied for and received EU27 citizenship in the same year. And Morocco’s population is almost half that of the UK.

Facts4EU.Org has analysed the latest figures from the EU’s official statistics agency, in the light of the claims from the Remain campaign that large numbers of British citizens would reject the UK if the majority voted for Brexit. The results of our analysis put the Remainers’ claims into context and show the true figures. All data comes from the EU itself.

Brexit Facts4EU.Org Summary

Recipients of an EU27 citizenship in 2019 – the year prior to Brexit

  • Only 4 in every 10,000 British citizens (0.04%) opted for citizenship of an EU27 country
  • In total only 29,842 Brits became citizens of EU27 countries

© Brexit Facts4EU.Org - click to enlarge

  • In total, EU27 member countries granted citizenship to 706,397 people from all countries
  • British people comprised just 4% of these
  • The remainder were mostly Moroccans, Albanians, Syrians, Turkish, Romanians, Brazillians, Ukrainians, Algerians and Russians

Here is where the Brits chose their new citizenship

© Brexit Facts4EU.Org - click to enlarge

Observations

Yes, citizenships are only part of the story of Brexit, but they are at least an indicator. The fact that so few British people felt like actually changing their citizenship (rather than just talking about it) in the penultimate year of Brexit tells a story in and of itself.

Let’s not forget that in 2019 - the year for which the EU has just released the latest citizenship data – the UK was expected to leave in March, and then again in October. If that wasn’t enough to persuade the doom-mongers of the Remainer-Rejoiner movement to depart for the Brussels mothership, surely nothing would?

In the case of most British people already resident in EU countries, there is of course no need to renounce their citizenship in order to continue as legal residents in their EU country of choice. That said, if these people are so enamoured of the EU in preference to their country of birth, one might have expected a few more of them to have done so.

The myth of free movement for the British people

It must also be remembered that there are far fewer UK citizens resident in EU27 countries than EU27 citizens resident in the UK, as we have shown in many reports, including our most recent one here. During the Referendum campaign the figure used for EU citizens in the UK was 3 million and the number of UK citizens resident in the EU was put at 1.2-1.5 million.

We consistently produced reports showing this was not the case, and in the end the EU and British civil servants have admitted the truth. The UK Home Office says that so far more than 5 million EU27 nationals have applied under the UK’s permanent settlement scheme whereas the EU says there are less than 0.85 million Brits living in EU27 countries. The EU benefited far more from free movement – by a factor of 6 to 1 – than did the UK.

We continue to believe that facts like ones which we have shown above – from official EU sources – are important.

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[ Sources: EU Commission statistics agency | UK Home Office ] Politicians and journalists can contact us for details, as ever.

Brexit Facts4EU.Org, Thur 18 Mar 2021

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