Chancellor Olaf Scholz in the weekly online format "Kanzler kompakt" spoke for "better rules for German citizenship".
Chancellor Olaf Scholz stressed that Germany needs a better regulation of the citizenship law. Scholz said that the women and men as well as the children who have come to Germany in recent decades "have contributed a lot to the economy being as powerful as it is today". Some of these people have been living "for a very, very long time" in Germany and already have children and grandchildren here. So it is "very good" if they decide to apply for German citizenship.
The reform of the citizenship law is planned by the governing coalition between social democrats, ecologists and liberal democrats in the coalition agreement. On this basis, Interior Minister Nancy Faeser announced on Friday (25.11) the reform of the citizenship law. Foreign nationals living in Germany in the future can obtain a German passport after five years of residence in the country. For family members of the Gastarbeiter generation, the obstacles to citizenship are expected to be eased. The possibilities for holding some citizenships will also be expanded.
The proposed citizenship reform has been praised by the president of the German Institute for Economic Studies in Berlin, DIW, Marcel Fratzscher. "Germany's problem with skilled labor will be exacerbated by demographics and the competition to attract the brightest minds, if policy does not act more decisively than it has already." A clear perspective on citizenship is an important element in making Germany more attractive for skilled workers, Fratzscher told the Handelsblatt newspaper.
While the Christian Democratic-Christian Social Union in the opposition strongly criticized the plan to reform this law. The spokesman of the parliamentary group of Christian Socials in Bavaria, Alexander Dobrindt drew attention, that with this the German citizenship is being "invalidated". According to him "The invalidation of citizenship does not promote integration, but the opposite by increasing the tempting effects for illegal migration."
The head of the Turkish community in Germany, Gökay Sofuoglu, welcomed this planned reform. "The German right to citizenship no longer corresponds to the reality of our day; it must be reformed from the ground up," he told the editorial network of the Redaktionsnetzwerk Deutschland press.