Germany scraps three-year fast-track citizenship for highly skilled immigrants

Germany’s parliament has rescinded a fast-track citizenship programme, a move reflecting shifting attitudes on migration in Europe’s economic powerhouse. The legislation, originally allowing people deemed “exceptionally well integrated” to gain citizenship in three years instead of five, was a key target of Chancellor Friedrich Merz’s conservative party during this year’s election campaign.

“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 Germany’s new citizenship law, introduced under former Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s Social Democrat-liberal-Green government, remains intact, despite earlier conservative promises to reverse innovations such as dual citizenship and the cut in the waiting period from eight years to five.

SPD, now junior partners in Merz’s coalition, defended the change, noting that the fast-track provision was rarely used and that the liberalisation’s essence was preserved. Of 2024’s record 300,000 naturalisations, only a few hundred came through the fast-track system, which was designed to attract highly skilled and mobile individuals to settle in Germany, a country facing acute labour shortages. Candidates had to demonstrate achievements such as advanced German proficiency, voluntary service, or professional and 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,” Greens legislator Filiz Polat said.

Public attitudes toward immigration have soured, partly due to strains on local services from high migration levels. That sentiment has also bolstered the far-right Alternative for Germany, which now leads in some opinion polls.

(With inputs from Reuters)