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DANISH CITIZENSHIP

Why does Denmark renew passports faster than Sweden and Norway?

While people in Norway, Sweden and Finland all experience long waits for new passports, Danes usually need no more than a couple of days to obtain their new travel document.

Published: 6 April 2022 11:58 CEST
danish passport
Denmark currently turns around passport renewals much faster than all of its Nordic neighbours. Photo: The Local

Despite several attempts by police authorities in Sweden to reduce the waiting times for new passports, Swedish nationals in several parts of the Scandinavian country must wait for months in some cases before their application is processed.

The county (län) authority in Stockholm does not have available appointments for passport processing until October, for example, Swedish news wire TT wrote this week.

With pandemic restrictions severely limiting travel through much of 2020 and 2021, many people did not bother to renew their passports as they expired.

As a result, local police passport centres are now having to handle a large backlog of applications, at the same time as the usual applications from people whose passports are expiring this year. 

“Partly it’s because we’re about to go into high season, and partly it’s because people have not renewed their passports during the pandemic, but have waited until restrictions have been lifted,” Linda Ahlén, chief of the unit which handles passports in the Swedish police, told the TT newswire in February. 

READ ALSO: What’s behind the long wait to renew Swedish passports?

In Norway, passport applications are also handled regionally by police, with waiting times dependent on appointment availability.

The appointment system for Oslo shows the next available appointment slot as being in August. According to TT, a Norwegian police estimate has stated that the waiting times are between one and three months, depending on where in the country the applicant lives.

Meanwhile, the company which manufactures Norwegian passports, Thales, is facing government scrutiny over delivery delays on new passports and ID cards. Thales also manufactures passports for both Sweden and Finland.

A global shortage of raw materials due to the Covid-19 pandemic and the war in Ukraine is related to the delays, the Norwegian Police Directorate said last month.

Norway has also seen a bottleneck in applications resulting from passports expiring during the pandemic, but the holders not renewing them because they could not travel.

Extended opening times for appointments and hiring of extra staff are amongst measures being taken in Norway to alleviate the issue.

READ ALSO: Long queues for Norwegian passports and ID cards due to production issues

Finland is also seeing congested ID card and passport services, with waiting times for appointments up to around eight weeks according to TT.

This is despite rules in Finland allowing some passport holders to renew their documents without physically attending appointments, for example if they submitted biometric data for their previous passport within the last six years.

“Right now there are many who have not renewed their passports as usual and we do not have enough available appointments,” Hanna Piipponen, head of passport administration with the Finnish police, told TT.

As many as 500,000 people in Finland are reported to be without a passport currently according to TT, with almost as many, 450,000 in the same situation in Norway.

Denmark, however, is not experiencing the same processing and production issues as its neighbours, with people in Copenhagen waiting as little as one or two days to receive new passports.

Municipalities, rather than the police, are responsible for processing new passports in Denmark. That difference is largely credited for the country’s favourable record when it comes to waiting times for renewals.

“It is not complicated to issue a passport and it’s good to have this close to the other citizens’ service,” Jette Bondo, office manager with Copenhagen Municipality’s Borgerservice (Citizens’ Service), told TT.

Danish passports are also valid for longer than Swedish and Finnish ones, with a ten-year expiry on Danish passports compared to five years for Swedes and Finns. Norwegian passports are valid for 10 years.

Bondo said that Copenhagen did experience some backlog in processing during summer 2021 as travel restrictions eased, with around 45,000 passports waiting to be processed at that time. The figure is now 10,000.

Municipalities in Denmark extended opening hours when they experienced a backlog of passport renewals, TT writes.

“We couldn’t sit back and say ‘sorry, but you can’t go to France this summer’,” Bondo told the news wire.

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DANISH CITIZENSHIP

EXPLAINED: Can children of Danes regain citizenship after EU Court verdict?

Children of Danes who have lost their Danish citizenship because they turned 22 without applying to retain it may now get a second chance following an EU ruling, the country's immigration ministry has said.

Published: 23 January 2024 16:20 CET
EXPLAINED: Can children of Danes regain citizenship after EU Court verdict?

According to the ministry, children of Danes who turned 22 on or after November 1st 1993, but failed to apply to have their Danish citizenship made permanent before the deadline of their 22nd birthday, will now be able to apply to have their application reopened in some cases. 

For the case to reopened, the removal of citizenship will have to have “had effects in relation to EU law”.

For this to be the case, the removal of Danish citizenship will, firsly, also generally have to deprive the person of EU citizenship, and as a result impact “a family or employment connection to an EU member state other than Denmark”, which has been established before the age of 22. 

The ministry will also, in all cases where the loss of Danish citizenship at the age of 22 also means a loss of EU citizenship, from now on automatically consider whether the effects in relation to EU law of the loss of EU citizenship are proportional to the reason for removing citizenship (normally the lack of a demonstrated connection to Denmark). 

What is the reason for the change? 

The EU Court of Justice ruled last September that a Danish law allowing citizenship to be revoked from people born abroad to one Danish parent who have never lived in the country, if they reach the age of 22 without applying to retain it, was acceptable.

The case concerned the daughter of a Danish mother and an American father who has held, since her birth in the United States, Danish and American citizenship. After reaching the age of 22, she applied to retain Danish nationality, but the national authorities told her that she had lost it when she turned 22.

The EU court ruled that anyone facing such a decision “must be given the opportunity to lodge, within a reasonable period, an application for the retroactive retention or recovery of the nationality”.

The decision was a development from a previous ruling from 2019, in which the court had ruled that any decisions to remove Danish citizenship should consider the consequences of a loss of EU citizenship as well as of national citizenship, in cases where EU citizenship was dependent on Danish citizenship.  

The ministry, it ruled, must ensure that any loss of EU citizenship was “in accordance with the the fundamental rights laid down in the EU charter of human rights, including the right to privacy and family life”. 

The ministry in 2019, however, interpreted this as only applying in cases where the application to retain citizenship was submitted before the deadline of the person’s 22nd birthday. 

What are the rules around citizenship for Danes born abroad?

When a child has a Danish parent, they are automatically given Danish citizenship at birth, with some exceptions.

They they have until they are 22 to apply to retain their citizenship, with citizenship normally only granted if the child can demonstrate a strong connection to Denmark, by, for instance, residing in Denmark for at least one year before turning 22 or living in another Nordic country for seven years. 

What do you have to do to regain Danish citizenship? 

You need to submit a request the ministry to resume their application, including documents demonstrating that the revocation of Danish citizenship has had an impact in relation to EU law, by, for instance harming the person’s relationships with family or their work in an EU member state other than Denmark.  

The ministry will not consider any ties to another EU country that arose after the applicant’s 22nd birthday.

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