  We prove that, on a planar regular domain, suitably scaled functionals of
Ginzburg-Landau type, given by the sum of quadratic fractional Sobolev
seminorms and a penalization term vanishing on the unitary sphere,
$\Gamma$-converge to vortex-type energies with respect to the flat convergence
of Jacobians. The compactness and the $\Gamma$-$\liminf$ follow by comparison
with standard Ginzburg-Landau functionals depending on Riesz potentials. The
$\Gamma$-$\limsup$, instead, is achieved via a direct argument by joining a
finite number of vortex-like functions suitably truncated around the
singularity.
