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The figure compared with 115,000 awards made by Germany during the year and 96,000 by France, the EU data agency Eurostat said.

In Britain the largest group of new citizens was from India, making up 14.6 per cent of those being granted citizenship, followed by Pakistan (9.5 per cent), Nigeria (4.6 per cent) and the Philippines (4.2 per cent).

Dr Carlos Vargas-Silva, acting director of the Migration Observatory at Oxford University, said: A lot of these people getting citizenship in Britain are migrants from the Commonwealth, such as migrants from India and Pakistan.

Three-quarters of Indians getting citizenship in the EU are doing so in Britain.

That historic relationship, of once having a lot of colonies, means you get a lot of migrants from non-EU countries.

Britain made fourth largest number of citizenship awards when calculated as the number per every 1,000 inhabitants.

The figure of three new citizens for every 1,000 Britons compared with 8.7 per 1,000 in Luxembourg the highest figure in the EU and 5.5 and 3.5 per 1,000 in Ireland and Belgium respectively.

The British total was up 17,000 on the previous year but down a few hundred on the 2010 total, according to Eurostat figures.

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Quarter of new European Union citizens are in Britain