Is the number of applications for an EU member state passport on the rise?Is it easier to apply for a Czech or a German passport? Read on to find out about new developments and statistics in the realm of naturalization requests in Czechia and Germany.
The appeal of EU member state passports is undiminished, as can be seen in particular from recent German statistics (but also Czech statistics, if on a more modest scale).In Czechia, there is absolutely no development regarding the Czech Citizenship Act (Act No. 186/2013 Coll.), with the exception of Sec. 7x and Sc. 7y in the amendment to Lex Ukraine (amendment No. 24/2025) that have put an end to the naturalization of citizens of the Russian Federation (cf. our article Czech Law on Aliens and Citizenship).In Germany, a major liberalization took place in June 2024: https://bnt.eu/de/anderungen-im-tschechischen-und-deutschen-staatsangehorigkeitsrecht-im-jahre-2024/.For now, the number of applications continues to be on the rise.
I. Development and Statistics regarding German citizenship law – Art. 116 (2) Basic Law and Sec. 15 of the Act on Citizenship
1. New Statistics in German Citizenship Law – StAG
German statistics reveal a steep rise in applications from abroad (whereas applicants from within the country accounted for approx. 200,000 naturalizations last year; however, no separate figure is given for naturalizations due to redress for historic injustice).Several freedom-of-information requests with the Federal Office of Administration in Cologne / BVA Köln paint a more comprehensive picture:
From September 2021 until the end of 2024, the BVA received almost 35,000 applications based on Sec. 15 StAG, more of half of them in 2024 (approx. 20,000 applications).Of these, 7813 had been processed by the of 2024, with only 25 rejections.
The figure for 2024 for applications based on Art. 116 (2) Basic Law (Renaturalization after forfeiture of German citizenship between 1933 and 1945), Sec. 5 StAG (Acquisition of citizenship based on formal declaration) and Sec. 30 StAG (Application for declaratory relief) was about 13,500 within each category.This means that the BVA received altogether 60,000 applications in 2024 – a truly humongous volume which may rather tie up the office’s resources.As for applications pursuant to Sec. 5 StAG, the total number filed between September 2021 (when the option for acquisition through declaration was introduced) and the end of 2023 was 22,227.The BVA has reportedly taken measures to cope with this enormous number of applications – sadly, efficient digitization is not among them.Prior to the 2021 liberalization of the Citizenship Act, the expectation was that no more than 5,000 applications would be filed annually based both on Sec. 5 and Sec. 15 StAG; last year, the actual number was almost 33,000.
Across all procedures, the rejection rate of the BVA is fairly low; only in the case of acquisition by declaration as per Sec. 5 StAG, there have been almost 200 rejections as of the end of 2024 (188 to be precise, as against est. 7,500 decisions in total).Presumably, many of them concern declarations brought by children born out of wedlock between May 1949 and mid-1993 to German fathers (and a foreign mother), given that German citizenship did not pass to children out of wedlock until the second half of 1993.In those cases, the BVA requires an acknowledgement of paternity which, however, was in many cases not provided until the child completed their 23rd year of age (whereupon such acknowledgement is no longer possible), because many of these children were born abroad and lived there, and because the legitimization, or acknowledgement of paternity, was rendered pursuant to the laws of their country of residence and citizenship status (i.e., that of the mother), as opposed to German law and before German authorities.
2. A precedent for adoption cases (Morgenstern) – Art. 116 (2) Basic Law / Sec. 15 StAG
Toward the end of 2024, a case of adoption from prior to 1977 triggered a landmark decision by the Federal Ministry of Interior (BMI), ordering the BVA to accommodate the naturalization request pursuant to Art. 116 (2) Basic Law of a Mr. Morgenstern, represented in the proceedings by the author of this article.Mr. Morgenstern had been adopted in 1967 in England by two Holocaust survivors, both born in the 1920s, who arrived in England in 1939 as children (as part of the children transports).The adoptive father hailed from Berlin, had emigrated to Vienna in 1933, and eventually fled to London even before the 1938 Anschluss of Austria; his future wife had come to London in 1939 from Essen.Both had never sought repatriation under Art. 116 (2) Basic Law.They married toward the end of the 1950s and adopted the applicant in 1967.Their son submitted a request pursuant to Art. 116 (2) Basic Law in 2022, invoking his adoptive mother (as the adoptive father’s claim was uncertain, seeing as he had become an Austrian citizen prior to 1938).The BVA initially argued that it was forced to deny the request pursuant to Art. 116 (2) Basic Law, since German citizenship passes to adoptees only for adoptions after 1977 – which is essentially correct.However, the question arose whether one should nonetheless rule in favor of renaturalization of the descendant of a beneficiary of Art. 116 (2) Basic Law or whether the case should be treated like that of a naturally born child as per Art. 3 (1) Basic Law in conjunction with Sec. 1754 (1) Civil Code (Effects of adoption in German law).Alternatively, one could have drawn upon Sec. 15 first sentence Item 4 StAG (permanent residence within the German Empire prior to 1933 and subsequent flight from Germany for the reasons cited in Art. 116 (2) Basic Law, such as racial persecution), considering that the adoptive mother had lived in Essen until 1939 and remained a German citizen until November 1941.Similarly, the adoptive father might come within the purview of the provisions of Sec. 15 first sentence Item 4 StAG thanks to his stay in Berlin in 1933.
Unfortunately, the BVA provided no reasoning for its decision, the BMI’s order does not elaborate on the legal aspects, and the relevant decree has yet to be issued.
The case may have reverberations also for other, pre-1977 adoption constellations under Art. 116 (2) Basic Law and Sec. 15 first sentence StAG, seeing as the lawmaker intended to cover adoptions before 1977 when it undertook the liberalization of citizenship law.
II. Stagnation in the Czech Republic
1. Parliamentary press No. 585 lingers in the House of Deputies
Unfortunately, the bill captured in parliament press 585, which we previously discussed in detail in our journal (in June 2024: https://bnt.eu/legal-news/czechia-changes-to-czech-and-german-citizenship-law-in-2024/) – a liberalization of Czech citizenship law in Sec. 31 and Sec. 33 that would benefit émigrés and their descendants – still has not made it to the agenda of bills to be heard by the lower chamber of Czech Parliament.Clearly, there is no intention to put the amendment on the roster before the end of the current parliamentary term in September 2025. This is a huge disappointment and a regrettable development, given that the gaps in Czech citizenship law have been known since 2015, the amendment bill has been long in the making, and the change would bring real relief to groups of affected people.It is particularly galling that many foreign visitors, for instance representatives of the AJR (Association of Jewish Refugees), were repeatedly promised by their Prague hosts that this amendment will pass.But scarcely were the delegates back in London, the customary Bohemian practice of protraction got the upper hand again and no results were produced.The only tangible outcome of the efforts of the past three years is thus the naming of a barren field in Holešovice to honor Sir Nicolas Winton – moreover near the “wrong” train station (Prague Bubeneč, whence none of the famous children transports ever departed).
2. Statistics on the Czech Citizenship Act (Act No. 186/2013 Coll.).
We filed freedom of information requests under Act No. 106/1999 Coll. with the public registry office (matrika) for Prague 1, which is the registrar in charge for most foreign applications, and learned that 1904 naturalization deeds were issued in the past eleven years (1 January 2014 through 31 December 2024) on the basis of Sec. 32 – declaratory relief – i.e., approx. 175 deeds every year.
This compares to 59 deeds in 2014 issued on the basis of Sec. 31 (renaturalization), followed by 2652 deeds in the ten years thereafter (1 January 2015 through 2024), i.e., approx. 265 deeds per year.A special regulation in Sec. 33 benefited only about 600 individuals in 2014; the time period for applications under Sec. 33 has since lapsed and the door is closed on citizenship awards based on it.In the past eleven years (1 January 2014 through 31 December 2024), 1650 applications were denied, i.e., 150 per year, as against twice the amount in total applications, many of them filed by Jewish Czechoslovak émigrés born abroad between 1949 and 1969.The author has personal knowledge of half a dozen rejections.The office itself keeps no statistics on appeals or court review procedures.The author knows of one case in which the appellant (Dr. Danby Bloch) prevailed, but that procedure was conducted before the authority in Ústí nad Labem.
All told, the numbers are very manageable: we are looking at approx. 300-400 applications annually for the entire country.If the law were to become less restrictive, these numbers could increase, but they are unlikely to exceed 500 applications per year.In this sense, political concerns that liberalization could lead to a huge number of individuals abroad with Czech passports are unfounded.In any case, the individuals in question would all have a very good reason to seek renaturalization.
3. Sec. 7x and Sec. 7y of Lex Ukraine (Act No. 65/2022, amendment No. 24/2025)
See also Section II in the article Czech Law on Aliens and Citizenship on the blanket rejection of applications for citizenship by citizens of the Russian Federation that is contained, for no good reason, in Lex Ukraine (considering that these individuals have nothing to do with the war against Ukraine and are not Ukrainian citizens themselves).
III. Conclusion
German citizenship continues to be highly appealing, with approx. 47,000 applications received by the Federal Office of Administration in 2024 alone (and then only from applicants residing abroad).One must assume the waiting periods to be enormous (though there are no official statistics on them).
In individual cases, there are still doubtful issues – e.g., pre-1977 adoption cases, or declarations by children born to German fathers out of wedlock who were not legitimized in accordance with German law – but these are isolated issues.For the most part, rejections and denials are extremely rare.
By contrast, both the number of applications and the number of naturalizations in the Czech Republic are very small, with approx. 500 naturalizations annually as against approx. 150 dismissals.An amendment to Act No. 186/2013 Coll. has been lying around in the House of Deputies for years, but a fast-track exclusion of Russian citizens, well-concealed in an amendment (No. 24/2025) to Lex Ukraine (Act No. 65/2022), passed Parliament very quickly.