Denmark’s new government has no plans to push ahead with a proposal to make it easier for people under the age of 18 to obtain Danish citizenship, despite three out of four government parties pledging to do so in the election campaign.
The Green Left, Social Liberal and Moderate parties all campaigned in this year’s election on a pledge to allow people under the age of 18 to obtain Danish citizenship without having to be included in a citizenship bill passed by parliament.
But the proposal was not included in the government program announced along with the new government last Tuesday.
“It is one of the things we have had to give up. That is clear,” Magnus Georg Jensen, immigration spokesperson for the Social Liberal party told the Politiken newspaper. “It was our policy in the past and now we have joined a government where we have not been able to get it included (in the government programme). We must accept that.”
Kirsten Normann Andersen, citizenship spokesperson for the Green Left Party, said that the issue had been a Social Democrat red line in the government negotiations.
“I was not involved in the negotiations, but all four government parties had some red lines. This was one of the red lines for one of the parties. And that’s why it wasn’t included,” she told Politiken.
Young people under the age of 18 used to be able to obtain Danish citizenship automatically by a simple declaration, but now the only way for them to obtain it is to be included in one of the Danish government’s sporadic citizenship bills.
You also need to have a permanent residence permit, to have passed a citizenship test, to have nine years of uninterrupted legal residence in Denmark and to have been in full-time work for a long period.
Denmark’s Fair Citizenship campaign has long been pushing for the requirements for young citizenship applicants to be lowered.
