Large-scale immigration the EU is expected to face encouraged us to analyse naturalization processes in the member countries. We focused on the concept of citizenship, as perceived in modern European integration policies. We explored the impact of the EU legislation on national law and established that member countries enjoy a high degree of autonomy. Based on a scholarly literature review and preliminary review of national legislation we prepared a list of the most common illegibility requirements. We analysed the selected requirements in naturalization processes of 27 EU countries. Three types of naturalization processes were considered: standard naturalization, naturalization for spouses and for refugees. Based on the research we classified member countries by the complexity of their naturalization processes. In the last part of the thesis we explored the correlation between the complexity of the naturalization process and the number of naturalized citizens. It has been found that the correlation is weak, as other political, socioeconomic and cultural factors impact acquisitions of citizenship.
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