As we know, it is possible that Greece leaves the EU - and therefore, at least some of the benefits of having a Greek passport will be nullified. Do you know of any ways that make it easy for a Greek citizen to get a passport in one of the remaining Schengen countries? The ability to buy property, start businesses, and live indefinitely in any Schengen country is what many Greek citizens would be after (after losing EU status).
Become a resident of one of the other Schengen countries now?
There is a big debate going on with regards to Brexit as to the rights of Europeans currently living in Britain and the British living in Europe–and a lot of feeling that they should have the right to remain where they are. Presumably the same arguments will apply to Greece.
I find it doubtful Greece will leave the EU, although there is a reasonable possibility they will leave the Euro and go back to a Greek currency.
The situation would be exactly as the UK is now facing - up to negotiation with the remaining member states, as indeed would be the consequences of Greece deciding to abandon the euro without asking to leave the EU.
Or in other words, nobody knows. Your question would be just one of hundreds to be resolved.
The OP isn’t asking what will happen *if *Greece bailed from the EU or the Euro. As folks have said, that’s unknowable since it depends on rules to be decided later.
He’s asking what things he can do today as a Greek to get himself dual enough citizenship that no matter what happens to Greece later he’s legally already e.g. Italian enough that he just stays in e.g. Italy undisturbed by the ructions in Greece.
I sure don’t know the answer, but I’m pretty sure that’s the question.
First of all, you’re confusing Schengen and EU here. Schengen is about abolishing passport inspections when you cross the border, but what you are interested in is the “ability to buy property, start businesses, and live indefinitely” in another country. The latter is a question of freedom of movement, which is guaranteed under EU law. Schengen and EU are neither synonymous nor coterminous: There are Schengen countries outsuide the EU (meaning you won’t have your passport inspected when you travel there from another Schengen country, but you need to obtain a residence or work permit if you want to reside there for a longer period or work there), and there are EU countries outside the Schengen area (meaning you don’t need a residence or work permit as an EU citizen if you want to reside or work there, but when you travel there your passport will be inspected at the border). Switzerland is an example of a non-EU Schengen country; UK and Ireland are examples of non-Schengen EU countries.
Secondly, it is a well-settled situation that it is within each country’s prerogative to define itself to whom it grants citizenship and under which conditions. If you don’t have another country’s nationality by birth then you will have to apply for naturalisation; the legal requirements differ, but usually they involve that you must have resided in that country for a longer period (such as five years), must have a clean criminal record, and must pass a citizenship test. Most countries will ease requirements to the spouses of a citizen. More recently, some EU countries have established “citizenship by investment” programmes whereby you can apply for accelerated naturalisation if you invest a minimum sum of money in a local company or inn real estate, but these programmes usually involve considerable sums of money that go into the hundreds of thousands of euros or dollars.
The Schengen agreement dates to 1985. In 1976 I took a train from Zurich to Brussels and back four times, crossing into France, Luxembourg, and Belgium and the reverse. There was no customs inspection at all between France, Luxembourg, and Belgium and only the most superficial one between France and Switzerland. Once I drove from France to Germany and my companion had to find a customs official for some purpose. It was hard to find one, even by Strassbourg. So Schengen didn’t actually change the practice much.
The Treaty of Rome signatories (including all the places you went except Switzerland) had largely allowed internal border controls to lapse.
This is true in the sense that the governments of these countries had decided to lapse passport controls, but it had, legally, nothing to do with the Treaty of Rome. The Treaty of Rome established freedom of movement (actually, it established a gradual phase-in of freedom of movement, but the transitional periods have long expired) but it did not abolish or outlaw passport inspections at borders, which is a thing different from freedom of movement. The Treaty of Rome did not deal with passport controls.
Hmmm… I remember the Swiss coming onto the train in the middle of the night (Paris to Venice) to check passports in 1999. We’d seen the French army patrolling the Metro in Paris with machine guns earlier, but it was unusual to us that the Swiss border guards also had machine guns IIRC. Very different from North America (then).
Isn’t Schengen a seperate treaty from the EU? Leaving one might not mean leaving the other.
Plus remember a lot of European countries are different from America. The new world (and Australia) is mostly built on immigration and countries generally tend to welcome immigrants and have plans to admit a certain number every year, and have means to turn them into permanent citizens.
Most European countries have a ethnic makeup and are not looking to allow foreigners to move there in any significant numbers - especially the ones without old empires in the third world. Germany for example, had a process where anyone with German grandparents could become a citizen, but for a long time Turkish guest workers even after a decade or two faced difficulty becoming citizens. European nations don’t worship the concept world-wide diversity the way America or Canada seem to. (Which is why Schengen was such a break-through. But, IIRC, residency did not translate to citizenship easily.)
Except that Schengen has nothing to do with citizenship and naturalisation requirements. Absolutely nothing. It’s merely about removing the passport inspection at the borders*. Which, last time I checked, is very much in place in the United States, and presumably also in Canada.
*): There is also a common visa policy that is part of Schengen, meaning that the conditions for granting visa to third-country foreigners who need a visa are harmonised. Those visas are then valid for the entire Schengen area. But that is for vistors. If you want to obtain the status of a permanent resident, or want to be naturalised, that is still governed by national law and not by Schengen.
Switzerland did not join the Schengen area until 2009.
It didn’t change the practice much as between France, Belgium and Luxembourg. However, if you had taken a train from France to Italy, or from Italy to Austria, your passport would or might have been inspected. (The deal when did the journey in the 1980s was that you gave your passport to the sleeping car attendant when you boarded, and he handed it back when you left. That way you weren’t actually disturbed unless the border officials decided they wanted to speak to you, which was rare.)
Schengen swept away a huge diversity of different regulations and different practices on the ground (the two are not always the same) and introduced formal and practical uniformity, including a common visa policy, over a very wide area of Europe.
Various EU countries have ‘Golden Visa’ schemes, Spain’s for example grants a temporary residency to anyone who buys property worth €500,000 or more. This can be renewed and after 5 years you can apply for permanent residency. Then after 10 years, as long as you have spent at least 183 days of each year in Spain, you can apply for citizenship.
Ireland is quite generous in that it grants citizenship to anyone with an Irish born parent or grandparent - unlikely to be the case with many Greek people though.
Poland is unusual in that you can write to the president asking to be made a citizen. He/she has the power to bestow citizenship - I have no idea if anyone has ever done this successfully.
There is a proposal for Brits to be allowed to purchase an associate EU citizenship, post-Brexit. I guess if that happens then there would be a strong precedent for allowing the Greeks the same thing if it came to Grexit. The only certain thing with that is that it’s all about the politics.
Thanks for being able to actually parse my question… Didn’t realize it would be this difficult to understand! 
Whereas if Joe Schmoe (or Rajiv Gupta) gets a landed immigrant visa to Canada, it takes only 3 years of residency to become a permanent Canadian citizen. USA, 5 years, I think. Ditto NZ and Australia. This is a big difference compared to 10 years and half a million euros; and I understand most European countries are similarly difficult. Of course, nowadays the line-ups to get landed immigrant status or US green card are extremely long and selective criteria are picky; but I’m not aware of any European countries that offer even half the opportunity for residency to random applicants that the new lands do.
(Q: what is the status today of those large numbers of Muslim immigrants in France from former French colonies? Or guest workers from Turkey in Germany - can they get citizenship eventually? How long?)
The period of habitual residence required for naturalisation in France is five years, while holding a residence permit. (Unless you’re an EU citizen, of course - EU citizens don’t need residence permits). It can be reduced to two years if you have completed your higher education in France, and to nil if you have served in the French armed forces, or have been accepted as a refugee.
A large proportion of the people of Maghrebi birth or descent living in France would be French citizens, but I haven’t seen any figures on this.
The residence period required in Germany is eight years, reduced to seven if you complete an “integration course”, and reduced to three years if you are living in Germany as the spouse of a German citizen. However you also have to renounce your citizenship of birth; this is a practical barrier for some people and a significant emotional barrier for many.
The UK residency requirement is five years. It’s ten years in Italy, reduced to four years for EU nationals and three years for anyone with one or more Italian grandparents. It’s ten years in Spain, reduced to two years for natural-born citizens of countries which which Spain has historic links (Iberoamerican countries, Portugal, the Phillipines, etc) and to one year for people with at least one Spanish grandparent. It’s three years in Poland; five years in the Netherlands; five years in Sweden (but two years if you are a citizen of another Nordic country); nine years in Denmark (but less if you are married to a Dane or have stateless or refugee status); five years in Croatia (but nil if you are married to a Croatian).
And so on. In other words, the picture is quite a mixed one, in terms of residence requirements.
As for the OP, unless he has family connections to an EU country which offers citizenship by descent to non-residents, it’s not likely that he can acquire citizenship of another EU country without actually going and living there. If he’s willing to go and live there, how long it will take to acquire citizenship will depend on the country he chooses. Italy looks like a good bet; it’s not that far from Greece, and the residence period required for an EU citizen is only four years. It may obviously be easier to go and live in another EU country while Greece is still a member state rather than waiting until a Grexit happens.
So does any EU resident have the right to qualify for citizenship in another EU country after living there long enough, or is there a different residency category equivalent to green card that leads to citizenship.
Otherwise any Brit should be able to get a EU country citizenship if they lived in that country long enough, as they don’t lose U.K. Citizenship.
Rules will vary subtly from state to state, obviously, but generally for naturalisation on the basis of residence you need to have been living the country (a) for the requisite period, and (b) with a legal status that entitled you to reside there. Obviously, living in one EU member state on the basis that you are a citizens of another EU member state will qualify you.
So, yes; a non-EU citizen might have to start by getting permanent residence/landed immigrant/green card/similar status, and then move on to citizenship. Depending on the rules in the state concerned, time spent in the country while qualifying for PR/LI/GC etc status might or might not count towards the qualifying period for naturalisation. But none of this will trouble an EU citizen.