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DANISH CITIZENSHIP

How many Danish citizenship applications are rejected each year?

This week the Danish government announced it would ask those people applying for citizenship for the third or subsequent time after previous rejections, to pay additional fees. We take a look at just how many citizenship applications are rejected each year.

Published: 24 March 2023 18:21 CET
A citizenship day at Christiansborg, Copenhagen
A citizenship day at Christiansborg, Copenhagen on Sunday 22nd May 2022. There were 733 rejected citizenship applications in 2022. Photo: Philip Davali/Ritzau Scanpix

Under Danish law, citizenship can only be granted to foreign nationals by legal nationalisation, so applications must be voted for by a parliamentary majority.

Accepted applications are processed by bills put in front of parliament twice a year, in April and in October.

Since updated citizenship rules introduced in 2021, the bills are now organised according to the nationality of applicants, rather than the previous practice of listing them alphabetically.

Therefore, the figures from the Ministry of Immigration and Integration below, show rejected citizenship applications, divided into the country categories: “Menap’ countries [Middle East, North Africa, Pakistan ed.] plus Turkey; stateless;  other non-Western countries; Western countries.

There are a number of reasons a Danish citizenship application can be rejected, including criteria related to residency, language, criminal records and financial self-sufficiency. A Danish citizenship test must also be passed before applying.

These figures were last updated on 14th March 2023.

Source: Ministry of Immigration and Integration

The number of rejected applications has noticeably decreased over the last two years and peaked between 2017 and 2020.

The highest amount of rejections came in 2018 when 62 percent of applications were rejected. The lowest amount of applications rejected was last year but it was also the year with the lowest number of applications.

This is when the new citizenship rules had come into affect, which as well as listing applicants according to nationality, also clamped down on those who have broken Danish laws. The new rules included asking applicants about “Danish values” in five extra questions on the citizenship test and the need for applicants to have been in full time work or self-employment for three and a half of the last four years.

The table below is the number of citizenship applications each year, broken into country categories. 

It is those applying for citizenship from the Middle East, North Africa, Pakistan and Turkey that face the most rejections each year. 

The fee for applying for citizenship is currently 4,000 kroner. When a person submits an application, they can apply again at no extra cost should their application not be successful under the existing rules.

Now a third or subsequent application by the same person will incur an additional fee, the immigration ministry said in a statement.

The objective of this is to “prevent applicants who receive a rejection from uncritically reapplying in cases with no outlook towards a different result, thereby risking increased processing times for naturalisation cases”, the immigration ministry statement reads.

A law change would be required to implement the new fee for repeated citizenship applications. The government said it expects to table a bill in the next parliamentary year, which commences in October.

Because the coalition government has a parliamentary majority, any bill it tables has a high chance of being adopted.

No decision has yet been made on either the amount of the additional fee, or on the reduction for young people who were born or grew up in Denmark.

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For members

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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