Germany scraps fast-track citizenship programme

BERLIN: Germany's parliament on Wednesday rescinded a fast-track citizenship programme, reflecting the rapidly shifting mood on migration in Europe’s labour-hungry economic powerhouse.

Chancellor Friedrich Merz’s conservatives pledged in this year’s election campaign to rescind the legislation, which allowed the “exceptionally well integrated” to gain citizenship in three years instead of five.

“A German passport must come as recognition of a successful integration process and not act as an incentive for illegal immigration,” Interior Minister Alexander Dobrindt told parliament.

The rest of the new citizenship law, a signature achievement of former Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s Social Democrat-liberal-Green government, will remain intact despite conservative pledges at the time to undo innovations such as dual citizenship and the reduction in the waiting period from eight years to five.

The SPD, now junior partners in Merz’s coalition, defended their support for the change, saying the fast track was rarely used and the liberalisation’s essence remained.

Of 2024’s record 300,000 naturalisations, only a few hundred came through the fast track, originally planned as an incentive for the footloose and highly skilled to settle in a Germany suffering from acute labour shortages.

Candidates must demonstrate achievements such as very good German, voluntary service or professional or scholarly success.

“Germany is in competition to get the best brains in the world, and if those people choose Germany we should do everything possible to keep them,” the Greens’ Filiz Polat told legislators.

Attitudes towards immigration have soured dramatically, partly because of the strain high migration levels have placed on local services. That shift helped propel the far-right Alternative for Germany party to first place in some polls.