"Making dual citizenship the rule and shortening the length of stay necessary for naturalisation sends completely the wrong signals. They don't fit with current developments at all," said Bavarian Interior Minister Joachim Herrmann after the Bundestag passed its draft citizenship reform law on Friday, calling it "extremely anti-integration and rewarding a lack of willingness to commit to Germany."
The draft law will shorten the time someone needs to have been resident in Germany before applying for naturalisation from eight years to five and allow dual citizenship for everyone, rather than the generally restrictive approach and patchwork of exceptions currently in place.
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What is the Bundesrat and where does it come into this?
Although the Bundestag has passed it, the upper chamber Bundesrat - which represents Germany's state governments, still needs to nominally agree to the law. In 1999, state governments led by the conservative Christian Democrats (CDU) killed a dual citizenship law that had been approved by a Social Democrat-Green majority Bundestag.
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However, a few things are different this time. For one, the CDU and Bavarian Christian Social Union (CSU) doesn't have the number of votes necessary to block the reform in the Bundesrat, according to Neukölln SPD Bundestag member Hakan Demir.
It's also worth noting here that the federal government has already consulted both state governments and the Bundesrat itself on this law a number of times last year, all without the conservatives being able to kill or stall the draft in consultation or committee stages.
The second is that the draft law, as it is currently written, doesn't change the German constitution, have an effect on state finances, or federal state "administrative sovereignty". As such, the Bundesrat must be consulted and nominally approve the law, but cannot block it in a meaningful way, according to parliamentarians within the governing coalition.
"If their opinion differs, the Bundesrat can object," said Demir in response to a question on Bundestag watchdog site Abgeordnetenwatch. "But the Bundestag can overrule this."
All that said, now that both the federal government and the Bundestag have approved this draft law, the biggest variable influencing when the new citizenship law will go into effect is when the Bundesrat approves it.
After it does so, the Federal President must constitutionally certify it. Although that's typically a formality, the draft law the Bundestag approved stipulates that it will go into effect three months after this certification.
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When might this draft law go to the Bundesrat?
The Bundesrat's next plenary session is scheduled for February 2nd.
Demir says the Bundestag has requested the Bundesrat consider the citizenship reform on this day, but that the Bundesrat has yet to confirm that it has added it to the schedule.
If the Bundesrat adds it to its schedule for the February 2nd plenary, the draft law is likely to be certified soon after and go into effect in May.
If it doesn't, it will likely be considered at the Bundesrat's session on March 22nd, which most likely means that the new law would go into effect before the end of June.
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