With the Brexit, the Ministry of the Interior has registered eight times more applications from British nationals in 2017, than in 2015, announced Wednesday the Ministry of the Interior.
In the run-up to Brexit, more and more Britons settled in France want to acquire French nationality, with the number of dossiers filed between 2015 and 2017 multiplying by eight, according to Wednesday’s report. Ministry of the Interior. “The context of Brexit has generated, for three years, a very significant increase in the number of applications for access to French nationality filed by British nationals,” said the Interior.
Between 2015 and 2017, the number of applications went from 386 to 3,173, it was specified. As a percentage, the British went from 0.4% to 3.5% of the files filed to acquire nationality between the two years. In 2017, “one-third of requests” concerned spouses of French, it was said the same source.
Applicants, “established in France” , wish to acquire French nationality “to continue to enjoy the advantages they enjoyed as nationals of the Union: easy movement in Europe, sometimes employment in the public service or elected office” , they added.
“Nouvelle Aquitaine is the first French host region”
In the first six months of 2018, the number of files filed by the British reached 1,370 (according to provisional figures), or 2.6% of total demand. The British community in France is estimated at about 300,000, according to figures from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. It is made up of retirees, recalled a parliamentary information report on the Brexit dating from February 2017.
INSEE estimates for its part to 150,000 the number of British residents in France in 2014, “1.5 times more than Germany, but 2 times less than Spain.”
“Nouvelle Aquitaine is the first French region to welcome British residents” since “26% of them have taken up residence”, meaning “39,000 inhabitants” . “Next come Occitanie (17%) and Île-de-France (13%),” INSEE added in a September 2017 document.
Focusing more on “rural areas” , on the borders of the departments “they contribute to boost”, the British of France “often constitute more than 15% of the population in communes marked by problems of desertification or desertification. social difficulties, “added INSEE.
