The Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe moved to re-establish the Committee of Experts on Nationality. It expressed regret that there was no follow-up to the final report of the Group of Specialists on Nationality which was presented in Read More …
German coalition government has adopted the draft amendment to the citizenship law, reflecting the compromise between the Social Democrats and the Christian Democrats on the ‘option duty’ reached last month. Second generation immigrants will no longer be required to renounce either the citizenship of their parents, or that of Germany if by the age of 21 they have had either 8 years of residence, or 6 years of compulsory schooling in the country.
Read more details from Reuters.
The House of Lords votes through amendment which could require the Government to submit the controversial bill, which would allow it to strip citizenship of terror suspect even if that would render them stateless, to a joint committee of both Read More …
The head of Identity Malta – a government agency operating the controversial Individual Investor Program – announced that the applicants are not expected to be present 365 days a year to meet the one-year residency required to obtain Maltese passport. He insisted that the availability of a genuine link will be decided on a case by case basis, but according to observers two visits of the country during the year may be deemed sufficient.
Read full details in MaltaToday
by EUDO expert Szabolcs Pogonyi
According to the preliminary Parliamentary election results, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s Fidesz party has won the elections and may secure a two-thirds majority for another four years. With 99 percent of the votes counted, Fidesz (44,5 %) is forecasted to win 133 out of 199 seats in Parliament. The left-wing electoral alliance (26 %) is estimated to have 38, the far-right Jobbik (20,5 %) 23, and Can Politics Be Different? (5,3 %) 5 seats.
As part of a complete overhaul of the constitutional and electoral systems, non-resident Hungarian citizens could vote for the first time. The non-resident constituency is comprised of mostly the 600,000 Hungarians who have acquired citizenship through the Orbán government’s non-resident citizenship framework designed for the inclusion of ethnic Hungarians most of whom are living in the neighboring countries. Non-resident Hungarians could vote after registration for the party lists but not in single-member districts through mail vote (sent either by post or submitted at embassies).
In total, 193,793 non-resident voters have registered. Until election day, 146,299 mail votes have been received. Mail votes by non-resident voters could be submitted on election day also at embassies, but the number of these votes have not yet been published. Out of the received votes, so far 110,686 have been processed. As a result of a rather complicated submission process, only 87,972 voted were valid and as much as 20 percent have been void. Out of the 87,972 validated votes, 62,754 have been counted as of Monday, April 7. Fidesz has received the overwhelming 95,4 percent of these votes, while Jobbik has 2,32 and the left-wing alliance 1,23 percent.
These numbers suggest that the vote from the non-resident constituency may prove decisive in determining whether Fidesz can maintain its two-thirds majority in Parliament. According to the current projection, Fidesz will have 133 seats – exactly the number necessary for an absolute majority. Out of the total 199 seats, 93 are reserved for the party-list representation. In the party list vote, slightly more than 80,000 votes are required to win one seat. It is very likely that the votes from the non-resident constituency will secure one seat for Fidesz, without which it would otherwise have no absolute majority. With two-thirds of seats in Parliament, Fidesz may rewrite any laws including the Basic Law adopted in 2011.
Read an update with the final results by Kim Lane Scheppele. Read her earlier commentaries on the Hungarian franchise politics
Read more details about the submission of ex-pat voting in our report on electoral rights by András Bozóki
Read our earlier news about the constitutional entrenchment of ius sanguinis
On 4 April 2014 the Russian Duma approved an amendment to the Russian citizenship law proposed by the government that allows speakers of the Russian language to get Russian citizenship under simplified rules (a shorter waiting period of 3 months instead of 6 months and no 5 year residency requirement). A commission will be set up to determine whether a person has sufficient language competence to be considered a Russian-speaker. To qualify, Russian-speaking applicants have to relocate to Russia for permanent residency, give up a prior citizenship and must have been themselves (or have direct ancestors) permanently living on the territory of the Russian Federation or “territories belonging to the Russian Empire or USSR, within the borders of the Russian Federation”.
Read more details from ITAR-TASS (in Russian).
Historically, citizenship has been the sine qua non for the franchise. Yet in the last several decades, dozens of democracies have created some form of voting rights for resident aliens. Noncitizen voting rights are conceptually important because they suggest some Read More …
This article brings to center stage the debate that is currently absent in larger discussions about citizenship and immigration: the reality that state and market forces are becoming increasingly intertwined in shaping migration selection criteria and membership-allocation priorities. The bulk Read More …
The Human Rights minister of the Czech Republic claimed that foreigners who have long stay permits should be given the right to participate in local elections. Currently, this is possible only for immigrants from other EU member states, but the minister emphasised that it would be in the state’s own interest to do its best to integrate all immigrants.
Read more details in The Prague Post.
Read about the failed attempt at enfranchising foreigners in Bremen.
While Russian citizenship law allows for dual citizenship, those who hold another nationality cannot stand for public offices or obtain classified information. Now three different bills were introduced in the Russian Parliament (the State Duma), providing sanctions for those who ‘conceal’ their foreign citizenship or fail to report that they have received such on time.
This would confound further the position of the residents of Crimea. Currently Russia is speedily issuing passports to them, and the head of the Federal Migration Service stated that their Ukrainian passports remain valid. But in the long run it may become tricky if they retain their Ukrainian citizenship and run for office. to make the situation even more complicated, the Ukrainian law prescribes administrative sanctions for dual citizenship too.
Read more about the Russian bills in The Moscow Times and Pravda.ru (in English).
