For the second consecutive year, Albanians rank second in the world for the highest number of people who acquired citizenship of a Member State of the European Union in 2017.
According to Eurostat, some 58,900 Albanians acquired citizenship of an EU state during 2017.
The three main states were Greece (50.6 percent), Italy (46.1 percent) and Belgium (1 percent).
Only citizens of Morocco were ahead of Albanians, followed by India, Turkey, Romania, Pakistan, Poland and Brazil. These eight nationalities account for about 34 percent of the total citizens who benefited from citizenship in one of the EU states in 2017.
Among the Balkan countries, only citizens of Kosovo and Serbia ranked among the top 30, but with a very large margin from Albania, ranked respective 25th and 28th.
The overall number of citizens acquiring citizenship of an EU state in 2017 was 825 thousand.
