European citizenship by descent

Most European countries let a person claim citizenship through an ancestor rather than through years of residence. If a parent, grandparent or great-grandparent of yours was born in Europe, or left it, there may well be a route open to you that has nothing to do with moving there.

What the route looks like differs a great deal from one country to the next. Each has its own statute, its own cut-off dates, its own view of which ancestors count and its own paperwork. Two families with what looks like the same history can find themselves on quite different paths. The purpose of this site is to work out which country's rules, if any, your family's facts fit.

Thirteen countries across Central, Eastern and Southeastern Europe: Albania, Austria, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, Romania, Serbia, the Slovak Republic, Slovenia and Ukraine. You can find them on the countries page.

Nine of the thirteen are EU member states. Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia and Ukraine are not, though each is a candidate for accession — so a passport from one of those four would not, for now, carry the rights that come with EU citizenship.

It varies, and this is often the question that decides a case. Some of these countries put no generational limit on descent at all, so a great-great-grandparent can still be the anchor. Others stop at a grandparent, or ask that the chain of citizenship was never broken along the way — and a chain can break in ways that are easy to miss, such as an ancestor naturalising elsewhere before the next generation was born.

Dates matter as much as generations. Many of these statutes turn on whether a birth, a marriage or an emigration fell before or after a particular year, and the answer can change if it fell on the wrong side of one. It is worth having the dates looked at before assuming a case is closed.

Then there may be more than one route available. Several countries in the region have enacted separate provisions for people who lost a citizenship, or never acquired one, because of persecution, deportation or forced emigration — most prominently in respect of the Nazi era, but not only then. These provisions tend to be more generous than the ordinary rules on descent: they often set aside generational limits, residence requirements and language tests that would otherwise apply.

They are also drafted narrowly, case by case, and a family history that plainly fits one of them in outline can still turn on a detail. This is an area we have worked in a great deal, and it is usually worth checking even where an ordinary descent claim looks unlikely.

In many of these cases, no. A number of the countries we cover accept dual citizenship outright, and several of those that are restrictive about it in general make an exception for citizenship acquired by descent or under a restitution provision — which is the situation most of our clients are in.

It is not universal, though. A few of these countries still expect a renunciation on certain routes, and the answer can turn on which provision you apply under rather than on the country alone. It is one of the first things to establish, because it may decide which route is worth pursuing. The United States, for its part, does not require you to give up US citizenship in order to hold another.

Usually not. The point of a claim by descent is that it rests on ancestry rather than on residence, and most such routes carry no requirement to have lived in the country, before the application or after it. Nearly all of the people we act for apply from abroad and stay where they are.

There are exceptions. Some countries attach a short residence or registration step to particular routes, and a few require a visit in person to swear an oath or collect documents. Whether that applies to you depends on the country and the provision.

Often not. Language requirements and civics tests are features of ordinary naturalisation, and descent-based and restitution routes commonly dispense with both. Where that is so, no examination is involved at any stage.

Some countries do ask for a basic command of the language on some of their descent routes, and a small number expect an interview. It depends on which route you qualify under, so it is worth settling that question early.

In most cases the citizenship can be passed on, which is the reason many families apply when they do rather than leaving it to the next generation. Children who are still minors can often be included in a parent's application; adult children generally apply in their own right, on the strength of the parent's grant.

Some countries set a deadline for registering a child born abroad, or count generations in a way that makes each further generation harder. Where that is the case, waiting can cost a family the claim outright, so it is worth knowing the position before deciding to wait.

As a rule, an unbroken civil-status record of the line between you and the ancestor: birth, marriage and death certificates for each generation, and whatever evidence exists of the ancestor's citizenship or of their departure. Depending on the route, that can extend to naturalisation records, emigration papers, census entries, deportation or persecution records, or military and property files.

Many of these documents are held in archives in the region rather than by the family, and older records were often kept in a language and script that no longer match the country's present borders. Retrieving them, and then having them notarised, apostilled and translated, is usually the longest part of the work — and it is part of what we do for clients rather than something you have to manage yourself.

There is no single answer, and anyone who gives you one without looking at your file is guessing. The range across these countries runs from several months to several years. What drives it is usually not the legal argument but the documents: a family whose records are complete and in order moves quickly, and a family whose records have to be recovered from archives in two or three countries does not.

Authority backlogs matter as well, and they move. Once we have seen what your case rests on and what is missing, we can give you a realistic estimate of both time and cost, and tell you if we think the case is not worth bringing.

Generally speaking, holding a citizenship does not by itself make you taxable in that country. Tax residence in the countries we cover normally turns on where you actually live and on physical presence, not on which passport you hold, so acquiring one while continuing to live in the United States does not usually change your position.

Two qualifications. The United States is unusual in taxing its citizens on worldwide income wherever they live, and a second citizenship does not alter that. And the detail differs from country to country, and from one person's circumstances to another's. Tax is outside the scope of what we advise on here, so it is worth putting the question to a tax adviser in both countries before you act on it.

In most cases this does not arise. Several of these countries have ended peacetime conscription altogether, and where an obligation still exists on the books it is generally directed at citizens who live in the country, not at those resident abroad. Age limits rule out most applicants in any event.

Ukraine is a case of its own at present, and the rules there are neither settled nor easy to summarise. If the question matters to you or to a family member, it should be looked at specifically rather than answered in general terms.