In a statement published by parliament’s Office of Naturalisation (Indfødsretskontoret) on the Ministry of Immigration and Integration website, the office said that no further citizenship bills will be tabled in parliament this year.
This means any applicants for citizenship who fulfil the criteria this year cannot have their cases approved by parliament until 2026.
Justifying the decision, the office said parliament will not have time due to additional tasks related to the country’s EU presidency.
To become a Danish citizen, you must first apply to the Immigration Ministry which assesses whether you meet the relevant criteria. If approved, citizenship must be granted via legal nationalisation. This means your application has to be approved by a parliamentary majority.
To do this, the government tables a bill including the names of all people whose application for citizenship have been found to meet the criteria since the previous bill was voted through.
The bill is normally tabled and then voted on in parliament twice yearly, in April and in October.
READ ALSO: EXPLAINED Denmark’s unusual procedure for granting citizenship
However, the second of these two votes in 2025 has been cancelled, the Office of Naturalisation has stated.
“As a result of the Danish EU presidency in the second half of 2025, it has been decided that only one bill to award citizenship via naturalisation will be tabled in the upcoming parliamentary session (2025-26),” it said in the statement.
“The bill is expected to be tabled in January 2026 and enter into force on April 1st 2026,” it added.
A parliamentary session or folketingssamling runs from October until June in non-election years.
The wording of the statement therefore suggests that the January 2026 bill will replace the one which is usually tabled in April, meaning the two bills next year will be tabled in January and October, instead of in April and October.
This leaves 2025 with only a single bill, which has already been tabled and voted on in April and May.
The current waiting time for a Danish citizenship application to be processed is 24 months.
Meanwhile, a law change passed earlier this year, raising the cost of applying for citizenship from 4,000 kroner to 6,000 kroner, is set to become effective on the application portal from Wednesday, June 18th.
The law change came into force on May 1st, but the necessary IT updates to the application portal mean it takes effect around seven weeks after this date, news wire Ritzau reported.
The application fee remains 4,000 kroner for first-time applicants who were born or raised in Denmark. That is because Denmark has “special international obligations” to this group, the Immigration Ministry said in a statement.
The law also changes the rules for repeat applications such that only the first reapplication is now free of charge, after which a fee of 3,000 kroner will apply. Under the previous rules, rejected applicants were able to reapply as many times as they wanted without incurring additional costs.
The new fee “more closely reflects” the costs to the Danish state of processing citizenship application, according to the ministry statement.
“It is common sense to raise the fee for applying for Danish citizenship. The idea is that it should better reflect the actual costs incurred by the Danish state in processing the applications, which is an extensive process,” Minister for Immigration and Integration Kaare Dybvad Bek said in the statement.
“Likewise, it obviously costs money to process reapplications. There should naturally be a fee for that too. So I think these are extremely sensible changes,” he said.
Comments