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5 Ways to Get an EU Passport Without Paying a Cent · IMI Podcasts

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: A passport in an EU member state buys you the right to live, work, and study across 27 countries.
• 0:07
  SPEAKER_00: So you'd think the cost is substantial, but five ways into European citizenship never ask for a cent, and you might already qualify for one without even knowing it.
• 0:17
  SPEAKER_00: In this video, you'll learn about all five, plus a less talked-about bonus path at the very end.
• 0:23
  SPEAKER_00: Since Malta closed its direct citizenship by investment program in 2025, no investment buys a passport in a European Union member state directly anymore.
• 0:34
  SPEAKER_00: A golden visa buys you a residence permit and years of waiting, nothing more.
• 0:38
  SPEAKER_00: What's left are qualifying connections.
• 0:41
  SPEAKER_00: Now, calling these routes free requires one small asterisk.
• 0:44
  SPEAKER_00: Every one will include administrative costs like government fees, apostiles, certified translations, usually a lawyer, etc.
• 0:54
  SPEAKER_00: What none of them costs, though, is an entry fee.
• 0:56
  SPEAKER_00: Let's also note that rules change fast.
• 0:59
  SPEAKER_00: Italy, Spain, Portugal, and Germany have all rewritten parts of their citizenship law in the last two years, mostly to tighten it.
• 1:08
  SPEAKER_00: Legislative change is just a fact in this business, not a question mark.
• 1:12
  SPEAKER_00: Changes like these is actually why we built IMI Sovereigns, our private community of investors and entrepreneurs worldwide.
• 1:19
  SPEAKER_00: We host frequent live sessions called Sovereign Signals, where we talk through the rumors and the not yet public shifts we can't report openly.
• 1:27
  SPEAKER_00: To give you a sense of the edge that this buys, our members knew Argentina was building a citizenship by investment program a full two years before you knew about it.
• 1:36
  SPEAKER_00: If you want to be early, that's where you should be.
• 1:39
  SPEAKER_00: Link and a nice discount are in the description.
• 1:41
  SPEAKER_00: Let's start with the route you can't choose: being born in the right place.
• 1:45
  SPEAKER_00: Several EU states grant citizenship based on birth on their soil, a principle called just solely, Latin for right of soil.
• 1:53
  SPEAKER_00: Almost none of them grant it automatically, like most countries in the Americas do though.
• 1:58
  SPEAKER_00: Germany gives citizenship at birth if only one parent has lived there legally for at least five years and holds permanent residency.
• 2:06
  SPEAKER_00: France and Spain go farthest of all, where a child born in those countries to a parent who was also born there is by origin French or Spanish, respectively.
• 2:15
  SPEAKER_00: However, most of Europe rejects unconditional birthright citizenship.
• 2:19
  SPEAKER_00: So this route rarely helps an adult who was born somewhere else.
• 2:22
  SPEAKER_00: Where it counts is the next generation.
• 2:25
  SPEAKER_00: If your children are born or raised in an EU state, a claim may already exist, and it costs nothing but the paperwork to document it.
• 2:33
  SPEAKER_00: Which brings us to a route you can control.
• 2:36
  SPEAKER_00: Way number four, and likely the one you're most familiar with, is you earn it by living there.
• 2:41
  SPEAKER_00: You don't need ancestry or a spouse.
• 2:43
  SPEAKER_00: Live in an EU country long enough on a valid residence permit, from work to study to family reunification, and you can naturalize on residency alone.
• 2:52
  SPEAKER_00: Ireland asks for five years of residency within the previous nine, with no language test, one of the more accessible routes in Europe.
• 3:00
  SPEAKER_00: Germany also sets the bar at five years, cut from eight back in 2024, though it wants B1 level German and a citizenship exam.
• 3:09
  SPEAKER_00: Spain has two tracks.
• 3:10
  SPEAKER_00: Natural-born citizens of Ibero-American countries, Andorra, the Philippines, Portugal, and a few others, naturalize after just two years.
• 3:19
  SPEAKER_00: Everyone else waits ten.
• 3:21
  SPEAKER_00: But watch the timelines because they're always moving and sometimes not in your favor.
• 3:26
  SPEAKER_00: Portugal was the five-year benchmark for years.
• 3:29
  SPEAKER_00: In May 2026, though, it stretched that to seven years for EU and Portuguese-speaking nationals and ten for everyone else.
• 3:36
  SPEAKER_00: So this route does not require an investment, but it does ask for patience and presence.
• 3:41
  SPEAKER_00: You fund your own life in the country, meet the physical presence rules, and usually pass a language or civics exam.
• 3:48
  SPEAKER_00: Time is the currency.
• 3:50
  SPEAKER_00: But for those who'd rather not spend a decade in limbo, there's a faster door.
• 3:54
  SPEAKER_00: Way number three, you marry an EU citizen.
• 3:57
  SPEAKER_00: Marriage doesn't hand you a passport at the altar in most cases, but it shortens the weight considerably.
• 4:03
  SPEAKER_00: And in a few countries, it shortens it sharply.
• 4:05
  SPEAKER_00: Spain is the fastest.
• 4:07
  SPEAKER_00: Marry a Spanish citizen and you can apply after just one year of legal residency in Spain, against 10 years for most applicants.
• 4:14
  SPEAKER_00: Germany cuts its standard requirement to three years for a spouse as long as the marriage has lasted at least two.
• 4:20
  SPEAKER_00: In most states, marriage compresses the residence clock rather than removing it, and immigration officers scrutinize these applications to screen out arrangements of convenience.
• 4:30
  SPEAKER_00: Now, a few states dropped the residence requirement altogether, and Portugal asked the lease of new potential citizens.
• 4:37
  SPEAKER_00: A spouse of a Portuguese citizen can acquire citizenship after three years together without ever living in Portugal, though the 2026 reform tightened the proof of a genuine connection.
• 4:48
  SPEAKER_00: So marriage and residence both put the work on you, but the final two roads put the work on your ancestors.
• 4:54
  SPEAKER_00: Way number two, and this one comes closest to pure justice.
• 4:57
  SPEAKER_00: You reclaim a citizenship your family lost.
• 5:00
  SPEAKER_00: Some Europeans didn't emigrate by choice.
• 5:03
  SPEAKER_00: They were stripped of citizenship and forced out, and several countries now let their descendants reclaim what was taken at no cost, often with no residency or language requirements.
• 5:15
  SPEAKER_00: Germany is an option here.
• 5:16
  SPEAKER_00: Descendants of people who lost or were denied German citizenship on political, racial, or religious grounds between 1933 and 1945 can reclaim it, and each descendant has an individual claim.
• 5:30
  SPEAKER_00: So grandchildren and great-grandchildren can apply even if their parents never did.
• 5:35
  SPEAKER_00: Austria opened a parallel route in 2020 for the descendants of those who fled Nazi persecution, and it lets them keep their current nationality in direct opposition to its ban on dual citizenship.
• 5:47
  SPEAKER_00: But these windows open and close.
• 5:50
  SPEAKER_00: Spain's Democratic Memory Law, which let the descendants of Civil War and Franco-era exiles reclaim nationality, close to new applicants in October 2025, with no extension on the table.
• 6:02
  SPEAKER_00: Germany has a separate reparation route by declaration, and its window is open only until 2031.
• 6:08
  SPEAKER_00: So if a claim like this lies in your family, the clock may be ticking, which leaves the single broadest route of all.
• 6:15
  SPEAKER_00: Finally, way number one, the route most likely to be in your family tree.
• 6:20
  SPEAKER_00: You claim citizenship through ancestry.
• 6:22
  SPEAKER_00: If you have a European parent or grandparent, this is the cheapest passport in Europe.
• 6:27
  SPEAKER_00: Citizenship by descent, or just sanguinous, the right of blood, passes nationality down the family line, no matter where you were born.
• 6:34
  SPEAKER_00: Ireland is the standout here as it offers what may be the strongest citizenship in the world.
• 6:39
  SPEAKER_00: Anyone with at least one grandparent born on the island of Ireland can claim Irish citizenship by registering on the Foreign Births Register.
• 6:47
  SPEAKER_00: No residence or language tests required.
• 6:50
  SPEAKER_00: By some estimates, more than 70 million people worldwide could claim Irish descent, and many qualify without ever realizing it.
• 6:57
  SPEAKER_00: Hungary offers one of the broadest programs, approving more than 1 million applications from people of Hungarian descent since 2010.
• 7:05
  SPEAKER_00: No residency required.
• 7:06
  SPEAKER_00: Portugal recognizes the children and grandchildren of its citizens, and its 2026 nationality law overhaul left those descent roots intact.
• 7:15
  SPEAKER_00: Poland, Bulgaria, Latvia, and Lithuania reached back generations.
• 7:20
  SPEAKER_00: Czechia and Slovakia also let the descendants of former citizens claim by declaration.
• 7:26
  SPEAKER_00: Italy used to be the most generous of all here, recognizing dissent with no generational limit whatsoever, until a 2025 law and a 2026 court ruling narrowed it sharply.
• 7:37
  SPEAKER_00: The trade-off across every descent route is documentary.
• 7:41
  SPEAKER_00: You reconstruct a family tree with birth, marriage, and death certificates, often apostaled and translated, and it can take years to assemble.
• 7:49
  SPEAKER_00: But the reward is a passport that costs administrative fees instead of a six-figure or seven-figure investment.
• 7:56
  SPEAKER_00: Before we wrap, there's one more often forgotten option to claim EU citizenship, and it's the rarest of all.
• 8:03
  SPEAKER_00: A handful of EU states grant citizenship purely on merit, for exceptional service or talent, at the government's discretion, sometimes without any investment or residency at all.
• 8:15
  SPEAKER_00: Austria is the clearest example.
• 8:17
  SPEAKER_00: Under its citizenship law, a person whose achievements serve the special interest of the Republic in science, sport, the arts, or business can be handed an Austrian passport outright.
• 8:28
  SPEAKER_00: France has a similar path for those who render exceptional service to the state or bring rare talent to it.
• 8:34
  SPEAKER_00: Spain can award citizenship by royal decree for exceptional circumstances.
• 8:39
  SPEAKER_00: If your work has put you on that level or you're willing to drop serious investment in a country, it may be the cleanest path in Europe.
• 8:46
  SPEAKER_00: So before you price a golden visa, map your family tree two or three generations back, pull the birth certificates, and check which country's laws your ancestry fits.
• 8:56
  SPEAKER_00: Then confirm that the rule still stands, because as we covered, this is a fast changing corner of the investment migration field.
• 9:04
  SPEAKER_00: Now say one of these routes works, and you end up holding another citizenship, or you already hold a passport portfolio.
• 9:10
  SPEAKER_00: Using it well is a different skill entirely, especially now that automatic data exchange between governments is the norm.
• 9:18
  SPEAKER_00: We made a video on how to travel correctly with more than one passport, which document to show, when, and why the stakes keep rising.
• 9:26
  SPEAKER_00: Check it out on your screen now and subscribe and turn on those notifications so the next rule change reaches you before the headlines.