The first Global State of Citizenship report, by the Global Citizenship Observatory (GLOBALCIT) at the European University Institute (EUI) in Florence, analysed citizenship laws in 191 countries in 2024.
Researchers found that "with the growing number of armed conflicts and incidence of terrorism worldwide, many countries have introduced provisions for withdrawing the citizenship of a person on the basis of national security grounds.”
Over a third of countries, including many in Europe, “can now strip a person of their citizenship when their actions are seen as disloyal or threatening to state security,” the report said. The trend has been gaining pace in recent years.
The move to make it easier to take away someone's newly acquired nationality is linked to an “increasing securitisation of citizenship” since the 2001 September 11th terror attacks in the US.
Between 2000 and 2020, 18 European countries put in place measures to deprive individuals of their citizenship for reasons of national security or counter-terrorism.
Before 2001, these measures were “virtually absent”.
Recently, the Swedish government commissioned an inquiry on the revocation of citizenship from individuals threatening national security. Germany’s coalition parties discussed a similar policy for those found to be “supporters of terrorism, antisemites, and extremists”.
Hungary has also amended the constitution to allow the temporary suspension of citizenship for national security reasons.
The Middle East and North Africa are other regions where these policies have expanded, the report said.
Ways to strip citizenship
Four ways were identified in the report for when individuals can be stripped of their citizenship on security grounds. Nearly 80 per cent of countries have rules covering at least one of these situations.
In 132 countries around the world, and two thirds of European states, citizenship can be removed for acts that threaten national security, such as treason, espionage, trying to overthrow a government or terrorism. These laws exist in Belgium, Estonia, France, Germany, Greece, Ireland, the Netherlands, Switzerland, Turkey and the UK.
In 89 countries, however, this rule concerns only people who were naturalised, not those who acquired citizenship by birth.
Another reason that can lead to the stripping of citizenship is when naturalised individuals have committed serious criminal offences, which typically involves having been sentenced to imprisonment for a certain period. These rules exist in 79 countries but only a few in Europe.
In 70 countries, citizenship can be removed if someone was found to have served in a foreign army and in 18 countries this measure concerns only people who acquired citizenship by naturalisation.
In Europe, 40 percent of countries – including France, Germany, Greece, the Netherlands, Estonia, Turkey, Belarus and Bosnia Herzegovina – can remove citizenship under certain conditions if naturalised nationals were found to have served in a foreign army.
Latvia, one of the countries that can revoke citizenship for such reasons, changed the law in 2022 to allow its citizens to work with the Ukrainian military forces.
Citizenship can also be removed for providing non-military services to another state, such as being elected in a public office, working for certain agencies or even taking up a role in the civil service. Such rules exist in 75 countries around the world, including European countries such as France, Greece and Turkey.
Naturalised citizens more at risk
Luuk van der Baaren, co-author of the report, said “these developments indeed raise an important question as to what extent citizenship is still a secure legal status”.
The data also shows that “a large share of the citizenship stripping provisions are discriminatory in nature, as they only apply to specific groups, particularly naturalised citizens”.
This is to prevent a person from becoming stateless, but it means that “citizens by birth have a secure legal status, while those who acquired citizenship later in life do not,” he added.
Losing citizenship may not only affect the individual's security and opportunities for work, but also that of dependants, the report warned. In 40 percent of countries removing someone's citizenship can extend to their children.
Other ways of losing citizenship
There are other ways, intentional or not, that people can lose their citizenship, according to the report. The most common, is to have it withdrawn because it was acquired in a fraudulent way. Such rules exist in 157 countries.
Some 156 states also have rules on how to voluntarily renounce citizenship, usually with provisions to ensure that a person does not end up stateless.
In 56 countries, people can lose their citizenship if they acquire another nationality, and in 55 this may occur by simply residing abroad.
Under the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, “everyone has the right to a nationality”, but four million people in the world are stateless “because their citizenship remains denied or unrecognised,” the report continued.
On the other hand, 35 countries do not allow people to renounce citizenship, or they make it impossible in practice.
Unequal rights
The report also looked at ways to acquire citizenship and concluded different countries offered “highly unequal pathways”.
Countries make vastly different demands on applicants when it comes to criteria such as economic self-sufficiency, civic or cultural integration, language or citizenship tests, and renunciation of other citizenships.
And on residency requirements, the Americas and Western Europe have the more inclusive measures.
Citizenship in European countries is also regulated via the European Convention on Nationality, under which the residence requirement cannot exceed 10 years.
But in 15 countries the wait is longer than 10 years: Equatorial Guinea (40 years), United Arab Emirates (30), Bahrain (25), Qatar (25), Bhutan (20), Brunei (20), Eritrea (20), Oman (20), Chad (15), Gambia (15), Nigeria (15), Rwanda (15), Sierra Leone (15), St. Kitts and Nevis (14), and India (11).
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