17 countries inside the European Economic Area offer EU citizenship to grandchildren, great-grandchildren, or sometimes even more distant descendants of European citizens.

Because citizenship in one EEA/Single Market country grants the right to live and work in all of them, these citizenships consistently rank among the world's most desirable.

Tens (potentially hundreds) of millions of non-Europeans qualify for citizenship by descent. We've assembled a complete list, as well as an interactive map, of which European (EEA/Single Market) countries offer citizenship by ancestry.

For the purposes of this overview, we'll ignore the various citizenship by ancestral persecution solutions, such as the ones that apply to people descending from those stripped of citizenship in Nazi-controlled Germany and Austria or from Sephardic Jews in Spain and Portugal.

Note also that while Norway, Iceland, Switzerland, and Liechtenstein are not EU member countries, they are part of the Single Market and their citizens therefore have the same settlement rights across Europe as citizens of fully-fledged EU member states. In any case, none of those four countries offer citizenship by descent to those who are not immediate descendants of citizens.

The list to your right will tell you which countries currently offer citizenship by descent, along with a link to the source where you can find more information on eligibility requirements, exemptions, processing times, and so on.

How many people qualify for European citizenship by descent?

Outside of Europe itself, descendants of European citizens are overwhelmingly concentrated in the Americas. While there are certainly considerable numbers of European descendants living in Africa and Asia (not to mention Oceania, where the preponderance of inhabitants have European ancestry), the largest groups - in absolute terms - are found in North, Central, and South America.

In 2016, in the United States, 133 million Americans (41% of the population) reported they were of European ancestry. That number, however, includes only those who had first-hand knowledge of their European ancestry (or cared to report it): Some 244 million Americans (72%) of the population, self-identified as "White or Caucasian", many of whom simply consider themselves "Americans", rather than, for example, Irish-Americans or German-Americans.

In Latin America, moreover, an estimated 32-40% of the population (179-220 million people) are of European descent, and nearly half of them live in Brazil.

All told, more than half a billion people outside of Europe have some claim to European ancestry. Not all of those will be able to prove it, of course. Fewer still will be able to demonstrate they have a European ancestor only two or three generations removed.

A number of European countries, however, don't place a particular generational limit on citizenship eligibility through ancestry. If you can convincingly argue, through your evidence, that your ancestor was Hungarian, for example, there is - at least hypothetically - no limit on how many generations back you can go.

If you'd like to find a law firm that specializes in assisting with the often complex procedure of applying for citizenship by descent in one of the above European countries, you may reach out to the editor on cn@imidaily.com to request an introduction.