News

The EU countries best at integrating new migrants

(Picture: Christopher Furlong/Getty Images
(Picture: Christopher Furlong/Getty Images

David Cameron announced at Prime Minister's Questions on Wednesday that the UK will take in more unaccompanied Syrian refugee children from Europe.

The prime minister did not specify a figure, but SNP leader at Westminster Angus Robertson welcomed what he deemed to be the "beginning of a U-turn" on the matter.

A new release from Eurostat has detailed the naturalisation rate of EU countries - that is the share of foreign citizens acquiring citizenship of an EU member state - for 2013, in which the UK ranks highly.

In 2013, EU member states granted citizenship to roughly 980,000 people, a total representing three per cent of all foreign citizens in 27 countries.

Sweden recorded the highest naturalisation rate of EU countries, as the below chart from Statista details:

Three quarters of all citizenship grants at EU-27 level were reported by five countries, Spain (226,000), the United Kingdom (207,000), Germany (112,000), Italy (101,000) and France (97,000).

Non-EU citizens recorded a higher naturalisation rate of 4.3 per cent than foreign EU citizens, who recorded 0.7 per cent.

More:A map of countries where you can be killed for being an atheist

More:Even the Daily Mail thinks David Cameron's refugee policy is bad

The Conversation (0)
x