There are a great deal of Brits who aren’t waiting to find out how Britain’s plans to leave the EU pan out before getting their French citizenship sorted.

In fact, the number translates to a 254% jump in British requests to receive French citizenship. Formal Brexit discussions have just got underway but there are quite a few British people who aren't waiting to see if politicians manage to sort things out to their benefit before claiming French citizenship.

Understandably worried about what the future holds for their status in France as Britain's plans to leave the European Union move forward, the number of British people requesting French citizenship has skyrocketed from 385 in 2015 to a whopping 1,363 in 2016, French newspaper Le Monde has reported, according to information from France's Interior Ministry.

This represents a significant increase of 254% in requests.

Although that figure may be insignificant compared to the total number of Brits living in France - believed to be between 150,000 and 200,000 the figures show that fears about the future are rising among France's British population. The data from January has not been taken into account yet as the interior Ministry has yet to release them, but one can speculate as to how much the figures will weigh in on this sentiment.

The rise will probably come as no surprise to many given that many Brits had vowed to seek French nationality if Brexit was voted through.

"My kids were all born in France and have lived here all their lives," reader Nick Wood told The Local previously. "I cannot risk them getting booted out of the only home they know just because they are British citizens and Britain is no longer part of the EU."

And it seems like this attitude might prevail, with estimates from several French prefectures indicating that the number of requests is still on the increase.

The region of the department of Ille-et-Vilaine in Brittany in the north west of the country, which takes care of the requests for naturalisation for the four Breton departments, recorded, "a very big increase in the number of requests at the beginning of the year."

In just five months, the state received 110 ten applications, compared to 50 between July and December in 2016. Before 2016, just 10 to 20 files were handled each year.

And at that same prefecture, in the department of Deux-Sèvres, responsible for the citizenship requests in the former region of Poitou-Charentes on the French Atlantic coast, a similar trend is apparent.

Since the beginning of 2017, Deux-Sèvres has received 62 files compared to 16 in the first six months of 2016.
The requests are mostly coming from the older population, the Ille-et-Vilaine reported.

One can also expect British expats to return to their home country once the final Brexit negotiations are concluded, but at this point there is not data to go on – one can only speculate.

Contact deVere France for expert financial advice today!