More than 350,000 UK citizens have applied for passports from other EU member states since the 2016 Brexit referendum, according to data from nine countries. The surge has been most pronounced for Irish passports, with applications from Great Britain rising from 7,372 in 2015 to 54,859 in 2019, a 30-fold increase.
Ireland, due to its close historical ties with the UK, has seen the highest number of applications. In 2019, a total of 131,817 new Irish passport applications were made by residents of Northern Ireland and Great Britain, with nearly 55,000 from Great Britain alone. This compares with just over 32,000 in 2015.
Other EU countries have also experienced significant rises. In Germany, naturalisations of British citizens jumped from 622 in 2015 to 6,640 in 2018. France saw a tenfold increase, from 320 in 2015 to 3,827 in 2019. In Spain, where dual nationality is not possible for Britons, applications rose from 50 in 2015 to 209 in 2018, though numbers remain small relative to the estimated 600,000 British residents.
Belgium, Sweden, Italy, Denmark, and Finland also reported increases. In Belgium, naturalisations rose from 127 in 2015 to 1,403 in 2019. Sweden granted 4,267 passports to Britons in 2019, up from 942 in 2016. Italy saw applications rise from 266 in 2016 to 586 in 2019.
The data, obtained from government sources across the nine countries, covers the period from 2016 to 2020. It shows that nearly 360,000 UK-born individuals have applied for an EU passport since the referendum, seeking to retain their EU rights after Brexit.
