Malta: Over 200 applicants for citizenship through the Individual Investor Programme
Read the New Report in Times of Malta. consult the EUDO-CITIZENSHIP forum debate Should Citizenship be for Sale? or download the Working Paper.
News
UN study finds 27 countries limiting women’s ability to pass citizenship to their children or spouses
According to a study by Pew Research Center based on data from United nations, the legislation of 27 countries around the world do not allow for or restrict the ability of the mothers to confer their citizenship to the children.
More than 100,000 naturalised Germans in 2013
During the last year more than 100,000 people were naturalised as German citizens. While the majority of the applicants still come from Turkey, their share has declined considerably while the percentage of those coming from Italy and Ukraine jumped.
Bulgarian Minister Proud of Cutting Down Fast Track Naturalisations
By EUDO Citizenship expert Vesco Paskalev
On the occasion of the recent resignation of the Bulgarian government the outgoing Minister of Justice Zinaida Zlatanova gave a press conference and summarised the changes in the naturalisation policy for the last year under her watch. She proudly announced that the Bulgarian citizenship is not for sale, and that her ministry fought to stop this practice. She was apparently echoing Commissioner Vivian Reding who famously made this statement with regard to the controversial investor citizenship program introduced by Malta (eventually amended under pressure from the European Parliament and Commission, see here). However, in the Bulgarian context Minister Zlatanova must have had an entirely different practice in mind. While a few months ago undercover reporters of the Telegraph, the British daily, filmed consultants who were promising a ‘fast track’ to Bulgarian passports for their clients at the price of € 180,000, there are no known cases when citizenship was actually acquired for such a hefty price. Indeed, Bulgarian legislation does provide for fast track naturalisation to foreign investors, but only if they have made an investment much bigger than this (€ 1 million, which can be reduced for certain projects to € 500,000). Thus, it remained unclear what the consultants were promising.
What the outgoing minister was referring to was rather corruption in the process of facilitated naturalisation of applicants of Bulgarian origin (mostly from Macedonia but also from Moldova and Ukraine, see details). According to some media, her deputy even accused the Macedonian authorities of helping such applicants for a fee of € 1000-1500. It remains unclear what this help could possibly consist of as these authorities have no part in the procedure that unfolds in Bulgaria. Yet Bulgaria was in the habit of giving out passports to people of Bulgarian origin in neighbouring countries with little verification of this origin.
While the legal regulation of facilitated naturalisation has not been amended during the last year, the applications were subjected to a much stricter scrutiny by the ministry and the numbers fell considerably. Thus, in 2013 there were 16 941 applicants of which only 8285 were successful, compared to 18473 naturalisations in 2011 and 17329 in 2012. Few months after assuming office in June 2013, Minister Zlatanova publicly criticised the laxity of the Agency of the Bulgarians Abroad, which used to issue certificates for Bulgarian origin on the basis of personal statement of the applicants. This is no longer considered sufficient and the Ministry of Justice had started to require additional documents to prove the claimed origin such as birth or baptism certificates or military IDs of the ancestors. This change of policy appears even more dramatic when compared with that the previous government, which explicitly aimed to speed up the procedures and boosted the increase of the number of naturalised Bulgarians it brought about. However, the decrease of the numbers of naturalisations may be due to factors independent from government policy: Over the last decade most eligible applicants may have already received passports, and since 2010 Macedonians can also travel (but cannot work) freely without visas in the Schengen area.
Apart from the case of facilitated naturalisation on the basis of Bulgarian origin, naturalisation is rarely an issue of interest. According to the deputy-minister of justice Ilia Anguelov in an interview for the daily Trud, only two or three citizenships were granted on the basis of special services given to the country, to a Finnish motorcyclist who is now competing for Bulgaria and to an American film producer who was not named. As for the investor citizenship scheme, according to the deputy-minister there was not a single investor naturalised under the current regime (requiring a minimum investment of 1 million euro), but there are about 10 pending applications from investors (mostly Russians) who have invested less (minimum 250,000 USD before 2005 and minimum 500,000 USD before 2009) but on account of this have already received permanent residence and have lived in the country for more than 5 years.
The deputy minister also mentioned about a dozen cases of deprivation of citizenship of naturalised Bulgarians on the ground of prior convictions which they had failed to disclose. According to him, as the scrutiny of naturalisations tightened, such cases decreased. Interestingly, he was quoted as saying that “upon receipt of information from the Schengen Information System (SIS) about the conviction [we] repeal the naturalisation directly.” Indeed, the legislation does not provide for any procedural guarantees for the rights of the person concerned, and the authorities have a free hand to withdraw citizenship in such cases as quickly as they wish.
Belgians abroad may find themselves stateless
A Belgian citizen born and living in Hong Kong suddenly found himself stateless when the consulate of Belgium refused to renew his passport. Mr. Sze Chung Cheung was born in Hong Kong and did acquire Belgian nationality by birth through his mother, a citizen of Belgium. Subsequently the family moved to Brussels but Mr. Sze returned to Hong Kong in 2009. He had lost his citizenship because he was not born in Belgium, did not live there between ages 18-28 and did not make a declaration that he intends to remain Belgian national before the age of 28, which is required by the law in such cases. According to EUDO Citizenship expert Patrick Wautelet, the law does not require any official to warn the persons concerned that they may lose their citizenship. Last year the Court of Appeal ruled that the deprivation of Marc and Louis Ryckmans of their Belgian citizenship in similar circumstances was unlawful.
Rate of naturalisation in Ireland doubled although immigrants still are more often unemployed
According to the annual monitoring report of the Economic and Social Research Institute (ESRI) which analyses integration of immigrants in Ireland, the number of people who have acquired Irish citizens between 2010 and 2011 doubled, and doubled again in 2012. However the immigrants, especially those from non-EEA countries, remain more likely to be unemployed or suffer basic deprivation. There are positive signs in education, where the grades of teenagers of non-English background are lower, but the gap is narrowing.
Significant increase of the applications for Finnish citizenship
The number of applications for Finnish citizenship has grown considerably this year, and the processing time decreased despite of this. However, the number of positive decisions on these application remains the same – in 2014 only 3,931 individuals were naturalised, compared to 4,202 in 2013.
British High Court rules that a Jamaican who did not become British citizen because of illegitimacy was discriminated against
High Court of England and Wales quashed the attempt of the authorities to deport a convict, who did not acquire British citizenship by birth because he was born in Jamaica as illegitimate child of a British citizen. Had he been legitimate child, he would be British national and therefore not subject to deportation. The Court found that such differentiated treatment amounts to discrimination prohibited by the ECHR.
Why citizenship matters for migration in Europe. An interview with Rainer Bauböck
Rainer Bauböck, co-director of EUDO Citizenship Observatory, tells Toby Vogel why citizenship is an important factor in immigrant integration and outlines some recent changes to the concept of EU citizenship. Read the full interview in the European Voice (requires Read More …
CJEU strikes down the language test for spouses reuniting with Turkish citizens in Germany
by EUDO CItizenship Expert Laura Block
10.07.2014, Luxembourg – In its much anticipated judgment in the Dogan case (C-138/13) issued today, the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) ruled that the German law requiring spouses who join Turkish citizens resident in Germany to take a language test abroad as part of their visa application is incompatible with the standstill clause of the EU Association Agreement with Turkey. The standstill clause prohibits worsening of the situation of Turkish workers and citizens who are covered by the Agreement and reside in an EU Member State. Third country nationals wishing to enter Germany by way of spousal reunification have been required to prove knowledge of basic German since 2007. According to the Court making family reunification more difficult constitutes a new restriction to the freedom of establishment of Turkish nationals. The plaintiff, Ms. Dogan, is a Turkish citizen married to a Turkish husband who has been living in Germany since 1998. Ms. Dogan is illiterate and had not been able to provide the required proof of German language skills. Her visa application to join her husband in Germany was repeatedly rejected by the authorities, upon which she took her case to the Verwaltungsgericht Berlin which referred the case to the CJEU.
Read the press release and the full judgment of the CJEU.
Read more details in Der Spiegel (in German).