By EUDO CITIZENSHIP collaborator Laura Block, 27 November 2013.
In their final round of coalition talks on 27 November, Germany’s Social Democrats (SPD) and Christian Democrats (CDU/CSU) reached a compromise on toleration of dual citizenship, which had been one of the core issues dividing the parties and delaying the formation of a coalition government.
The so-called “option model” (Optionsmodell, Optionspflicht) will be abolished, but there will be no further general acceptance of dual citizenship in naturalisations, which the SPD had demanded. The option model, introduced into citizenship law in 2000, grants German citizenship to children born in Germany to two foreign parents, if one parent has had 8 years of legal residence. The German citizenship acquired through ius soli is, however, conditional. Those who do not renounce their foreign citizenship transmitted by their parents (through ius sanguinis) in time lose their German citizenship on their 23rd birthday.
176 cases of this type of citizenship loss had already been reported in 2013. If the new proposal is accepted, dual citizenship will thus be accepted in the future in these cases, which mostly concern young Germans with Turkish parents. EU citizens are exempted from the duty to renounce a foreign citizenship both in case of acquisition of German citizenship at birth and through naturalisation. The same is true for the citizens of third countries who do not allow renunciation of make it unreasonably difficult and costly.
The Optionspflicht had been controversial since its launch and in 2013, the first year in which the law had practical consequences, political opposition had grown. Not only had the SPD, the Green Party and the Left Party all put forward draft laws abolishing it, even the Conference of Integration Ministers of the Länder and the Federal Council (Bundesrat) had demanded to discontinue the policy.
The 473,000 party members of the SPD still need to approve the coalition agreement in an internal ballot. If this is successful, the new government is expected to take office in mid-December.
Read the news report (in German) in Süddeutsche.