BERLIN: In response to the rapidly changing attitudes against migration in Europe’s labor-hungry economic powerhouse, the German parliament on Wednesday canceled a fast-track citizenship program.
During this year’s election campaign, the conservatives led by Chancellor Friedrich Merz promised to repeal the law that permitted the “exceptionally well integrated” to become citizens in three years rather than five.
Alexander Dobrindt, the interior minister, told parliament that a German passport should not serve as a motivator for illegal immigration but rather as an acknowledgement of a successful integration process.
Conservative promises at the time to reverse innovations like dual citizenship and the lowering of the waiting period from eight years to five will not affect the remaining provisions of the new citizenship law, a hallmark accomplishment of former Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s Social Democrat-liberal-Green government.
