Monday 26, June
Want German citizenship? You might have to sue Berlin
More and more people are resorting to lawsuits against the state of Berlin in order to speed up the process of acquiring German citizenship. According to a report in the Tagespiegel, people in Berlin are currently waiting as long as two years in order to acquire citizenship – and the pile of open cases just keeps growing. There are currently 29,606 citizenship cases on file in the city, with 8,000 new procedures added since last October alone.
In order to speed things along, a growing number of people are resorting to legal action. 2022 saw 31 lawsuits against the state of Berlin for failure to act, a significant increase on previous years (there was only one such case over the two previous years).
Lawsuits against the state for not taking action are possible when applications are not promptly processed – and it seems like Berlin is struggling to meet demand. Currently 22 of 94 positions are vacant in the naturalisation authority and the city was only able to grant 8,875 claims in 2022. Early next year, Berlin will open a new central office to handle the claims – once this opens, the city has set itself the target of granting 20,000 people German citizenship each year.
