A note from the founder

Twelve years.
Most of them spent guessing.

So I built the thing I kept looking for and never found.

I am Jordi. I am from Barcelona and twelve years ago I moved to Copenhagen. Married to a Dane, two kids, a job in banking. The passport took all twelve.

Read the letter See the apps
Jordi Fakiani López holding his Danish passport
Danish. Still Spanish.
12

years before my passport arrived

8

apps across Europe

11

countries covered between them

Why I built it

Denmark gave me a life I could not have built anywhere else. I am grateful for it. None of what follows is a complaint.

It is the part nobody warns you about. Belonging is not handed to you. You earn it in years and those years are counted by rules that do not bend for anyone.

The rules are not hidden either. They are published and anyone can read them. What nobody does is put them together and tell you, plainly, where you stand today. So for a long stretch I could not have said what a parking fine would cost me or whether one long summer in Barcelona would quietly set my clock back.

You end up guessing. 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 is no shortcut and no version of this where the waiting quietly disappears. There are millions of us across Europe in the middle of it right now and most of us are guessing.

Jordi at the Danish citizenship ceremony, holding his certificate
The citizenship ceremony in Copenhagen.
The hardest part was not 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 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 did not 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 inside a set window. Miss the window and it is gone. Nobody sends a reminder.

It is the same problem wearing a different hat. 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.

What the law requires, what you have already met and what is still standing between you and a decision.

01

It tracks the real rules

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

02

It separates what is yours from what is not

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

03

It gives you one next step

The one thing that is 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 cannot honestly be known, the app says so instead of making one up.

Eight apps, eleven countries

Wherever you are building your life.

Every app works the same way, tuned to one country's rules.

Belong Nordic also runs in any browser: open the web app.

I started Belong Europe by tracking my own road to a Danish passport. It is eight apps and eleven countries now, 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 López
Jordi Fakiani
Founder, Belong Europe

I read every message.

A question, a correction or just how it is going where you are.

hello@belongeurope.com