70 thoughts on “Renunciation rates in Europe: five Swedes renounced citizenship in 2010”

1. It’s quite odd that there’s no breakdown of Germany, seeing as it’s a country that allows only one nationality (unless they are in the EU) and they keep pretty good tabs on it’s citizens (i.e. every time you move house here, you have to sign out of your former town and register in your new one.) Additionally there’s a huge diaspora population which the German media is always keen on highlighting and showing off, even. (I think it’s actually quite trendy atm to leave Germany for a life abroad: can count 5 television programs off the top of my head.) So I would imagine there must be a pretty good number of renunciations.
   Also, on that note, there’s a huge population of Turkish citizens here, who have to relinquish their passport, in order to receive a German one. It’s a big deal, and why the German gov’t will prob not be changing the law anytime soon to allow dual. But I guess the Prime minister Erdogan basically has said that any “former” Turks, from Germany, will be issued a passport just the same. So there’s another friendly policy towards it’s ex-pats.
   The Greek one is really intriguing. I would hazard a guess that many of these are boys growing up in foreign country who don’t want to go back for military service.
   It seems easy to get it back in certain cases though.
   http://www.greekembassy.org/embassy/content/en/Article.aspx?office=11&folder=919&article=20574
   Nice post!

2. I understand most of these renunciations, especially those coming from poorer parts of Europe and naturalising in Germany or Austria like I imagine that the vast majority of the former Polish and Croatian citizens mentioned here have done. Since Poland is in the EU and Croatia is joining next year they will all be able to go back if they wish to as well under the freedom of movement clauses of the EU.

   What I absolutely cannot fathom is why somebody would voluntarily renounce a perfectly good citizenship like the Irish one when it is not required at all. I imagine that some of those 15 people who needlessly renounced their Irish citizenship after obtaining the US one will come to deeply regret that decision in the future. In my book, every citizenship that doesn’t tax you overeases (US or Eritrea) or enforce mandatory conscription (Russia or Singapore) is an asset that should be maintained. I also do not understand why anyone would renounce a Danish or Dutch citizenship for a Turkish, Bosnian or Ethiopian one, even if returning to their home country. Surely all of these countries have lax visa regimes for retirees to return home.

   I have to agree with the post above – Why would you turn in one of the best passports in the world, one that you probably worked and struggled to receive after a decade or more, for ones that are some of the worst in the world in terms of visa free travel and international respect…and also for regimes that are questionably democratic?

   Also, the figures about Morocoo don’t make any sense since they do not recognise the right to renounce their citizenship there. What I mean is that there are lots of Moroccan immigrants in the Netherlands and Belgium who never lost their original citizenship when taking their new EU ones (since they couldn’t legally renounce them), so those people naturalising in Morocco must be spouses of Moroccan citizens I imagine.

   In all, I found this to be a depressing read that so many people would abandon their citizenship when they have no need to do so. I would also like to know where Greeks are renouncing their citizenship? Most of them seem to be moving to the UK, other EU countries or Australia, almost all of which permit dual citizenship.

3. Sorry for the long post…This just hit a bit closer to home than reading statistics about US citizenship renunciations (which from my perspective is a foreign country).

4. Actually, Germany does permit dual citzenship for EU members. See: http://www.eu-info.de/eu-familienrecht/staatsbuergerschaft-eu/7505/

5. Yes, that’s what I meant, by unless they are in the EU. 😀

6. In Brazil people who descendants of Germans have dual citizenship. Brazilians who married Germans too.

7. http://www.sueddeutsche.de/politik/doppelte-staatsbuergerschaft-zwei-paesse-fuer-ein-leben-1.194270
   guess if your parent is German you can keep two. So it’s only for people who take the German citizenship and aren’t from the EU. Germans can collect whatever nationality they want. Guess the Spouse get the exception too in Brazil, because they have a residence abroad.

8. Maybe Germany figures that it is doing former Americans a favor by making them give up their US citizenship.

9. Eric, remember the “real” renunciation statistics are really “1,700 Covered Expatriates” and not the TOTAL number of people who have renounced. There are countless people who have commented here and on other sites that they were not included in the lists.

   Don, yeah, I kind of think that the people who renounced their “good” citizenship in exchange for the US time-bomb-citizenship are just crazy. They are probably ignorant to the fact of how the US treats people who go overseas.

10. Very interesting information. It does need to be clarified that at least some of the countries, specifically Germany and Austria, which are listed as not allowing dual citizenship actually do allow it for persons who are born abroad of citizens of those countries and simultaneously acquire citizenship in both countries at birth. These persons are not required to renounce their foreign citizenship in order to retain citizenship in either Germany or Austria. I don’t know about the others.

    A close friend of mine, now retired from Siemens, spent several years in the US in an executive position with a Siemens company. He has a daughter who was born in the US and is very proud of her having a US passport which she uses when they return to the US for a visit. Right now as she is reaching aduthood what is going on taxwise with US citizens living abroad is a matter of concern.

    There is a large colony of Menonites in Brazil that moved there in the 1920 from Russia after the Communist Revolution. They had emigrated from Germany to Russia for religious reasons. Over several generations they have maintained their German citizenship and language, continuing to use it in their church services. I am aware of serveral, one of which I know personally because I worked with him for the same company when he was in Brazil. He now works in Berlin and was able to move from Brazil to Germany using their German passpots. When he accpeted this job offer he explained to me that it would be an easy transition since they all had German passports and spoke German at home.

    It is common for descendants of Germans born in living in South America to maintain valid German passports. Germans can travel to the US without US visas, but if they come to the US as Argentines, Brazilians, Chileans, Peruvians, etc. then they have go through the time consuming process and expense of obtaining US visas, for which a personal interview with a US consul is reuired.

    I also have an Austriaan friend who lives in Austria who was born in the US when his parents lived temporarily in California. He was a teenager when they all returned to Austria. He has both nationalities and faithfully fles US tax returns every year.

    The Baltic republics of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania all have large populations of Russian speaking citizens whose parents moved theire from the Soviet Union in the years following the forced anexation of these countries by the Soviet Union dring the second world war. The were granted their independence again with the breakup of the Soviet Union. These were atractive places for Soviet citizens to reloacte during those days because all 3 of them were much more highly developed than Russia and other parts of the USSR.

11. Once again, awesome data. It looks like I’m going to have to update my graphs with this. Thank you!

12. @Don Pomodoro: yeah, the Irish renunciations don’t make any sense to me either. My guess is those 15 or so people probably didn’t do their research and just assumed that because they swore the U.S. oath to “renounce and abjure all allegiance and fidelity to any foreign prince, potentate, state, or sovereignty” that they had to go report loss of citizenship to the Irish consulate.

    @Daniel Kuettel, littlemsami, & Roger: Wow, had no idea about the German dual citizenship thing. Thanks for that. Guess I was wrong. I wonder why all those ex-Poles and ex-Croats renounced anyway then …

    @overseasexile: heh, sorry to be stealing all your post ideas 🙂 Did you ever get the UK data for other years? The Home Office website seems to have some of the statistics online when I search for it, but when I try to actually go to the website it sends me off into a 302 loop

13. OK, I’m looking at the raw Eurostat data and it doesn’t make sense to me. For example, consider the line “SE,F,DK 67 50 68 : “. (Headers are “citizen,sex,geotime 2010 2009 2008 2007”). That line suggests that 67 Swedish females gave up their citizenship for Denmark in 2010. That seems at odds with what you’ve reported. And the numbers also seems highly unlikely. For example, the numbers seem (to me) to suggest that around 400 Swedes gave up their citizenship in 2010, not just 5. The description from Eurostat is very unclear.

    Can you clarify?

14. Eric: still waiting for the UK to respond. And steal away with my post ideas. I steal from here all the time 🙂

15. @overseasexile: I think “GEO” refers to the renounced citizenship and “CITIZEN” refers to the new citizenship. So the line you’re quoting would be ex-Danish citizens who became Swedish citizens. To be honest I had to guess — my logic was that “CITIZEN” includes a lot of countries outside of the EU who I doubt would be reporting their renunciation data to EuroStat, so that must be referring to the new citizenship.

16. Some other pointers for understanding the data: CC3_07 means the three EU candidates in 2007. I think “STLS” is for “stateless”. HDC/MDC/LDC means “highly/medium/less-developed countries”. The metadata page is (not very) helpful.

17. Eric, you might be right. By my interpretation, US citizens are flocking to Ireland, Lithuania, and Poland (I seriously doubt that’s correct).

    There’s a full “description” of the data at http://epp.eurostat.ec.europa.eu/cache/ITY_SDDS/EN/migr_acqn_esms.htm, but again, I still can’t tell which is which after reading their description, though they offer a “statistical support” contact page: http://epp.eurostat.ec.europa.eu/portal/page/portal/help/user_support

18. I found the pre 1997 US renounciation numbers in a GAO report. Here they are:

    1991- 619
    1992- 556
    1993- 697
    1994- 858
    1995 to 1997- 1,903
    1998- 440
    1999- 433
    2000- 522
    2001- 334

    There are some slight inconsistencies in the later years with data we have already seen but I suspect the 1991 to 1997 numbers are fairly accurate.. For some reason they bunched 95 to 97 together.

19. @overseaexile, you may well be correct on US citizens flocking to Poland. Even before the fall of communism there were a sugnificant number of persons born in Poland who had become US citizens that were returning to their roots in Poland when they retired. With their US retirement pensions and US Social Security benefits they could live like Kings back home in Poland. The second largst “Polish” citiy in the world is Chicago after Warsaw. It is not uncommon there when calling a business to hear “press 1 for English, press 2 for Spanish, press 3 for Polish.” On my last trip to Chicago I stayed at the Sheraton Hotel near O’Hare Airport, which is where the crew members of Lot, the Polish airlines also stay. The hotel desk and coffee shop personnel were fluent in Polish, and lobby announcements were in English and Polish.

20. Tim: where could I find a copy of that GAO report?

21. @overseasexile

    http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/GPO-CPRT-JCS-2-03/pdf/GPO-CPRT-JCS-2-03-9-2.pdf

22. @All,

    Thanks for all this interesting information. I will look forward to digesting some of it after today’s commitments.

23. @Roger: there is also a large German-speaking contingent in Kazkhstan(!) that has a stronger right to citizenship than 4th Generation Turks in Germany.

24. @Eric…. There you go again, confusing us with data! I joke…

    This does bring to mind the Economist article In praise of a second (or third) passport.

    However, more and more the U.S. Passport may have to be excluded in the multiple passport praise for all the reasons we know too well when living overseas.

25. @Don, One possibility is pressure from society or family to become a citizen and/or give up old ties. Won’t come up in the stats – might come up in and in-depth study. I have some experience with this. Keeping the old citizenship can be interpreted as an insufficient commitment to the new country. It can make spouses and in-laws nervous about future intentions. Dual citizenship can also be an impediment to political participation in some places. Even where it is legally allowed people do not necessarily want to vote for or give government positions to someone who is a dual. Just a few ideas here….