{"id":8541,"date":"2025-10-09T01:31:18","date_gmt":"2025-10-09T01:31:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/jobuzo.com\/en\/berlin-ends-three-year-fast-track-path-to-citizenship\/"},"modified":"2025-10-09T01:31:18","modified_gmt":"2025-10-09T01:31:18","slug":"berlin-ends-three-year-fast-track-path-to-citizenship","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jobuzo.com\/en\/berlin-ends-three-year-fast-track-path-to-citizenship\/","title":{"rendered":"Berlin ends three-year fast-track path to citizenship"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>\n<div class=\"medium-insert-images norender-embeds ui-sortable\">\n<figure contenteditable=\"false\"><figcaption contenteditable=\"true\" class>Reichstag building in Berlin, seat of Germany&rsquo;s Bundestag (Lower House of Parliament). &mdash; AFP\/File&nbsp;<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<p>BERLIN: Germany&rsquo;s parliament on Wednesday rescinded a fast-track citizenship programme, reflecting the rapidly shifting mood on migration in Europe&rsquo;s labour-hungry economic powerhouse.<\/p>\n<p>Chancellor Friedrich Merz&rsquo;s conservatives pledged in this year&rsquo;s election campaign to rescind the legislation, which allowed the &ldquo;exceptionally well integrated&rdquo; to gain citizenship in three years instead of five.<\/p>\n<p>&ldquo;A German passport must come as recognition of a successful integration process and not act as an incentive for illegal immigration,&rdquo; Interior Minister Alexander Dobrindt told parliament.<\/p>\n<p>The rest of the new citizenship law, a signature achievement of former Chancellor Olaf Scholz&rsquo;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.<\/p>\n<p>The SPD, now junior partners in Merz&rsquo;s coalition, defended their support for the change, saying the fast track was rarely used and the liberalisation&rsquo;s essence remained.<\/p>\n<p>Of 2024&rsquo;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.<\/p>\n<div class=\"internal-linking-related-contents\"><a href=\"https:\/\/jobuzo.com\/en\/12-weeks-jail-for-school-it-support-technician-who-took-upskirt-videos-of-teachers\/\" class=\"template-1\"><span class=\"cta\">News :<\/span><span class=\"postTitle\">&lt;div&gt;12 weeks' jail for school IT support technician who took upskirt videos of teachers&lt;\/div&gt;<\/span><\/a><\/div><p>Candidates must demonstrate achievements such as very good German, voluntary service or professional or scholarly success.<\/p>\n<p>&ldquo;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,&rdquo; the Greens&rsquo; Filiz Polat told legislators.<\/p>\n<p>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.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p><sub>Berlin ends three-year fast-track path to citizenship<\/sub><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Reichstag building in Berlin, seat of Germany&rsquo;s Bundestag (Lower House of Parliament). &mdash; AFP\/File&nbsp; BERLIN: Germany&rsquo;s parliament on Wednesday rescinded a fast-track citizenship programme, reflecting the rapidly shifting mood on migration in Europe&rsquo;s labour-hungry economic powerhouse. Chancellor Friedrich Merz&rsquo;s conservatives pledged in this year&rsquo;s election campaign to rescind the legislation, which allowed the &ldquo;exceptionally well&#8230;<\/p>\n<p class=\"more-link-wrap\"><a href=\"https:\/\/jobuzo.com\/en\/berlin-ends-three-year-fast-track-path-to-citizenship\/\" class=\"more-link\">Read More<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &ldquo;Berlin ends three-year fast-track path to citizenship&rdquo;<\/span> &raquo;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":8542,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8541","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jobuzo.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8541","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jobuzo.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jobuzo.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jobuzo.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jobuzo.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8541"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/jobuzo.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8541\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jobuzo.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8542"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jobuzo.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8541"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jobuzo.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8541"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jobuzo.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8541"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}