Now it will be even harder again to get Danish citizenship

On 20 April 2021, Socialdemokratiet, Venstre, Det Konservative Folkeparti og Liberal Alliance, adopted a new agreement on citizenship.

The agreement entails several significant tightening of the conditions for obtaining citizenship. It can be read here.

Exclusion from citizenship in the event of a suspended or unconditional prison sentence

Under the new agreement, it will no longer be possible to become a Danish citizen if you have previously been sentenced to an unconditional or conditional prison term.

It should be noted that this requirement also applies to applications that have already been submitted.

However, in certain cases it will be possible to request that one's case be submitted to the Committee on Nationality of the Danish Parliament for the Committee's opinion on whether an exemption may be granted, e.g. in the case of a crime which was previously subject to a qualifying period and this period has expired.

Longer qualifying periods for other offences

If the applicant has previously been sentenced to a suspended fine, the suspension period will now be calculated from the date of the decision, and not, as previously, from the date of the offence. This extends the qualifying period.

In the case of repeated periodic penalty payments, the period of probation is extended by the period of probation for each individual case. In addition, repeat offences no longer require the same type of offence.

Finally, the limitation period for fines for social control and social fraud is extended from 4.5 years to 6 years.

More unknown questions in the citizenship test

In the future, the 2015 citizenship test will be extended with 5 additional unknown questions, which will relate to Danish values. This will increase the number of unknown questions from 5-10.

The extension will not apply to the next citizenship test, which will be held in June this year.

Tightening of the residence requirement

In future, ordinary applicants will be required to have had two years' continuous residence after being granted an indefinite residence permit. For refugees and stateless persons, the requirement is 1 year.

Employment requirement

In future, applicants will be required to have been in full-time regular employment or self-employment for at least 3 years and 6 months within the 4 years preceding the date of submission of a draft law on naturalisation. Furthermore, the applicant must be in employment at the time of the submission of a draft law on the granting of citizenship.

Other aggravations

The requirement that applicants must not have debts due to the public authorities is extended to several types of debt.

In addition, the self-support requirement is tightened up for those applicants who can make do with a pass in Danish 2 or equivalent, as a result of being self-supporting for a number of years.

Finally, the fee for applications is increased and the framework for the Constitutional Ceremony is changed.

When will the new rules enter into force?

The requirement that applicants must never have been sentenced to an unconditional or suspended prison term will enter into force immediately. This means that even applicants who have received a letter stating that they are expected to be included in the draft law on naturalisation to be presented in April can expect to be affected by the tightening.

The other requirements will enter into force after a transitional period corresponding to the processing time.

The 2015 amendment to the Nationality Test will come into force at this year's winter term.

We regularly assist applicants in citizenship cases. If you are planning to apply for citizenship, or have already applied and would like guidance on what the new rules mean for you, please contact us to find out more about what we can do for you.

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