Switzerland remains a favourite destination for German emigrants, as almost 311,300 of them were living in the neighboring country at the beginning of 2022.
According to a press release by Destatis, the Federal Statistical Office, the number of Germans moving to Switzerland has been increasingly changing throughout the years, with the most recent data for 2021 revealing that 1,800 more Germans were living in the neighbouring country, which accounts for a one per cent increase.
The same data reveals that German nationals acquired Swiss citizenship the most out of all other countries, marking a record high in 2021 with a total of 7,940 naturalisations or 14 per cent more than in the previous year.
The list of the most favourite destinations for Germans to emigrate to is concluded with countries like Austria, which is ranked second as approximately 217,000 emigrated there in 2022.
“At the beginning of 2022, a good 216,700 German citizens lived there. However, the increase compared to the previous year was higher than in Switzerland at four per cent or just under 8,000 people. What both countries have in common is that the change of residence for Germans is made easier by the physical proximity and the lack of language barriers,” the press release explains.
Spain is listed third with 142,632 German emigrants in the same year, while data for the United Kingdom, which in 2019 was listed third with 142,368 German nationals, does not figure officially. At the beginning of 2021, there were around 139,600 Germans living in Spain, which represents a two per cent increase compared to this year’s data.
In addition, France received around 87,233 German immigrants in 2021, while 82,932 emigrated to the neighbouring country of the Netherlands. As noticed, Germans like to emigrate mainly to neighbouring countries, such as France, Netherlands, Austria, and Switzerland, with the last two being German-speaking countries.
Furthermore, the remaining countries where Germans emigrate the most include Belgium and Italy, with 40,000 and 33,000 inhabitants, respectively, while the list is concluded with the Scandinavian countries, as almost 83,000 Germans emigrated to these countries in 2022.
More specifically, the number of German nationals moving to these countries differs between 29,000 in Sweden, 28,000 in Denmark, and another 26,000 in Norway. On the other hand, Sweden was the second favourite country for acquiring citizenship for Germans, with 1,350 of them becoming Swedish citizens in 2021 – some five per cent less than in the previous year.
In addition, the number of naturalisations of Germans in France has also jumped as around 330 Germans took on French citizenship in 2020, while the figure was almost 430 in 2021.
On the other hand, the Swiss population has been increasing as the Swiss Federal Statistical Office (FSO) recently revealed that the growth rate for 2021 was 0.9 per cent, which indicates that some 76,600 more people were living in Switzerland than in the previous year. This brings the Swiss population to a total of 8.8 million.
