The top three top 3 non-EU recipient countries of Croatian citizenship in 2016 were Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia and Chile. In new data released by the European Union organisation, Eurostat, on the number of citizenships handed out to people from non-EU countries Croatia is most favourable towards its direct neighbours, and rather surprisingly a South American country.

A total of 1,516 people from Bosnia and Herzgovina were granted with Croatian citizenship in 2016, followed by 734 from Serbia and 175 from Chile. Croatia granted citizenship to 3,703 non-EU citizens in 2016, which means that Croatia is way down the list of EU members granting citizenship. Italy was the top citizenship-granting country in the EU (20% of new citizenships granted), followed by Spain and the United Kingdom (both 15%), France (12%) and Germany (11%).

In 2016 the European Union members granted just over 863,000 new citizenships, with Morocco receiving the most, in total 101,295.