"Israel has the right to exist", now it has to be written for German citizenship
A new citizenship law has been enacted in Germany, requiring those seeking citizenship to acknowledge that Israel has a right to exist.
In the 2021 election, German Chancellor Olaf Schulz made dual citizenship a key point of his election campaign and promised to reduce the time it takes for new citizens to obtain a German passport to five years.
It should be noted that in Germany earlier the first generation of immigrants was not allowed to have dual citizenship. However, rising anti-Semitism, increasingly divisive debates about Israel's war against Hamas, and the popularity of anti-immigrant, far-right politics led to a revision of the citizenship law.
Yesterday, German Interior Minister Nancy Fesser said that 'anyone who adopts our values can now obtain a German passport in less time than before and will no longer have to give up their old citizenship, but we have also made this very clear. Given that anyone who doesn't share our values can't get a German passport. We have drawn a clear red line here and made the law stricter than ever in this regard."
German parliamentarians agreed in January on the legal basis for new citizenship rules, but the specific content of the citizenship test is set by government regulation.
The interior ministry had previously indicated that it planned to include questions about Judaism and Jewish life in Germany in the citizenship test, but declined to say whether it would include any specific questions about the state of Israel. Declaration will be included or not.
However, the German Interior Ministry confirmed yesterday that new questions on the topics of anti-Semitism, the right to the existence of an Israeli state and Jewish life in Germany have been added to the citizenship test.