For twelve years I was never quite sure what was still asked of me.

I’m from Barcelona. Thirteen years ago I moved to Copenhagen, and the life I was hoping for is more or less the one I got: married to a Dane, two kids, a job in banking. The passport took twelve of those years. For most of them I couldn’t have told you exactly which requirements I still had to meet, or what a single parking fine would do to my application.

So I built the thing I kept looking for and never found. Belong Europe is one app per country. It shows how far you are from citizenship, and how much of the wait is actually yours to move.

12 years

before my passport arrived

7 apps

all live on the App Store

10 countries

covered between them

Why I built it

Denmark gave me a life I couldn’t have built anywhere else. I’m grateful for it, and none of what follows is a complaint.

It’s just the part nobody warns you about.

Belonging isn’t handed to you. You earn it in years, and the rules do not move for anyone. And for a long stretch I genuinely did not know what a fine would cost me, or whether one long summer abroad would set my clock back. Not because the rules are hidden. They’re published, anyone can read them. But nobody puts them together and says, plainly: here, this is where you are.

So you guess. You ask a friend who guessed before you. You find a forum thread from four years ago and hope it still holds.

Meanwhile every day of residence counts. Every test. Every requirement. There’s no shortcut, and no version of this where the waiting quietly disappears. There are millions of us across Europe doing this right now, most of us guessing.

Jordi at the Danish citizenship ceremony, holding his certificate — The citizenship ceremony in Copenhagen.

The hardest part wasn’t the tests. It was not knowing how much longer I had to go.

That is what Belong Europe is for. You should be able to just look it up.

Jordi signing the declaration to retain his Spanish nationality at the Spanish embassy in Copenhagen — At the Spanish embassy in Copenhagen, keeping my Spanish nationality.

The other half

I didn’t have to stop being Spanish.

Not long after the ceremony I sat in the Spanish embassy here and signed a form to keep my Spanish nationality. Spain lets you keep it, but only if you say so in writing and only within a set time. Miss it and it is gone, and nobody sends a reminder.

It is the same problem again. The rule is published, the deadline is real and you only find out if you go looking for it.

The apps

One app per country, built on that country’s rules.

Belong Europe isn’t one app. It’s one per country, each built on what that country actually asks: what the law requires, what you have already met, and what is still standing between you and a decision.

Belong Europe. Know where you stand.

It tracks the real rules

Residence time, the language and citizenship tests, every requirement each country sets. Nothing simplified away to make the number look kinder.

It separates what’s yours from what isn’t

The years you have already lived count. The waiting you cannot rush is shown as exactly that: waiting. No invented dates.

It gives you one next step

The one thing actually in your hands today, rather than a list of twelve.

In your hands

Residence you keep building, day by day
Tests you can prepare for and pass
Requirements you can meet on your own terms

Not in your hands

Minimum waiting periods set in law
Processing times at the authority
Rules that do not bend for anyone

When a date can’t honestly be known, the app says so instead of making one up.

Seven apps, ten countries

Denmark Sweden Norway Finland Germany Spain France Italy Austria United Kingdom and more to come

Every app works the same way, tuned to one country’s rules. The answers only differ where the real rules do.

I started Belong Europe by tracking my own road to a Danish passport. It is ten countries now, seven apps, the same idea in each.

If you are somewhere in the middle of it too, wherever in Europe, one of them was built for you.

You can do it.
We will help you get through it.

Jordi Fakiani

Founder, Belong Europe

Get in touch

I read every message.

A question, a correction, or how it is going where you are. Write to me.

hello@belongeurope.com