For EU citizenship seekers
The route matters more than the passport.
By descent, by residence, or by investment, each runs on different law, different timelines, and rules that changed this year. Find the one that is genuinely open to you before you spend years on one that is not.
What you’re up against
The eligibility maze
Descent rules differ by country and by generation, and the paperwork (apostilled birth, marriage and death records across borders) is a project before it is ever an application. Many people qualify and never realise; others chase a route that was never open.
Rules that moved in 2025
Italy's 2025 Tajani Decree cut descent eligibility, Germany abolished its three-year fast track, France added a language requirement. A plan built on last year's rules can be quietly dead.
Backlogs measured in years
Even a valid claim can sit in a consular queue for years. The timeline is part of the decision, not a footnote to it.
Descent vs residence vs investment
If descent is closed, naturalisation by residence or, at the top end, investment may be open, but they run on entirely different clocks. Comparing them honestly is genuinely hard.
How this works for you
Every route's clock, in one place
The design names the citizenship route and rough years for each base, so residence-track options sit next to any descent claim you are chasing, on the same page.
Compare the routes→Which EU base naturalises fastest
The portfolio surfaces the strongest citizenship route among your configurations (Portugal's shorter clock against Spain's decade, for instance), weighed against tax and day-to-day life.
See the citizenship routes→Versioned facts for churning rules
The trust layer dates and sources every figure and flags high-churn items like naturalisation timelines, which is exactly where the 2025 changes bite hardest.
Make the presence years count
The builder checks that a residence-track year actually meets the physical presence a naturalisation needs, so you do not lose a qualifying year to a miscounted split.
Check your presence years→
A worked example
Chasing an Italian claim, with Portugal as the backup
Sample data, verification pending.
You may have an Italian great-grandparent and a possible jure sanguinis claim. It is the dream route, no residence required, but after the 2025 Tajani Decree the generational limits tightened and your line may now fall outside them.
So the plan needs a second track running in parallel: actually living in an EU country and naturalising. Portugal's roughly five-year clock is far shorter than Spain's ten, but it needs real presence each year, the kind a casual split would fail to accrue. The descent claim is worth pursuing; it just cannot be the only plan when the rules move mid-application.
The design shows the descent route and the residence route as parallel timelines, instead of forcing a bet on one. Timelines shown are sample data, and naturalisation rules are high-churn, so verification matters here more than almost anywhere.
See what could actually work for you.
A portfolio of designed setups, not a country ranking. Structured planning and decision support you take into a professional consultation, explicitly not legal or tax advice.