Germany's centre-left government insisted yesterday that it would press ahead with plans to overhaul the country's 85-year-old citizenship law, despite Sunday's surprise election victory in the state of Hesse for the opposition Christian Democrats (CDU).
However, senior Social Democrats hinted that a proposal to allow some foreigners to retain dual citizenship may have to be modified.
The Finance Minister, Mr Oskar Lafontaine, who is also chairman of the Social Democrats (SPD), acknowledged that opposition to the dual citizenship proposal played a decisive role in his party's loss of power in the southern state.
"We must draw the consequences from this," Mr Lafontaine said.
The CDU and its allies in the Liberal Free Democrats (FDP) ended eight years of government in Hesse by a coalition of Social Democrats and Greens. The CDU vote rose by 3.6 per cent and, although the SPD vote grew slightly, support for the Greens fell by four per cent.
The leaders of the CDU and FDP in the state predicted that coalition negotiations would be swift and uncomplicated and that a new government would be in place within a couple of weeks. Mr Lafontaine said that a compromise must be found which would defuse the citizenship issue and make it impossible for the CDU to make electoral capital out of anti-foreigner prejudice.
"We must make sure that this subject is not used to stir up anti-foreigner sentiment," he said.
Germany's leading polling institutes agreed yesterday that a petition against the government's new citizenship law played a crucial role in the CDU's success in mobilising its supporters to vote on Sunday. More than a million Germans have signed the petition, which calls for foreigners to be integrated into German society before becoming citizens and opposes the principle of dual citizenship.
"It was completely irresponsible, the way the conservatives manipulated the voters on the citizenship reform issue with their campaign of fear. We underestimated how far they would go to agitate the people," complained Mr Ottmar Schreiner of the SPD.
Under Germany's present citizenship law, which dates from 1913, citizenship is defined according to blood lines rather than the place of birth. This means that the descendants of Germans who moved to Russia or Romania centuries ago can claim German citizenship while thousands of children born in Germany to immigrant parents remain foreigners under the law.
Mr Gerhard Schroder's coalition of Social Democrats and Greens wants to make it easier for foreigners living in Germany to become citizens. Children born in Germany to foreign parents will automatically receive a German passport if at least one parent was born in Germany or arrived in the country before the age of 14.
The most controversial element in the proposed law reform is a plan to allow foreigners who adopt German citizenship to remain citizens of their country of origin.
The CDU acknowledges the need to ease the path towards citizenship for Germany's seven million foreigners but the party insists that immigrants must decide where their loyalties lie. The government argues that dual citizenship is a necessary bridge to encourage foreigners to integrate into German society.
Ministers also point out that two million Germans already enjoy dual citizenship - usually with such countries as Switzerland and the US.
The loss of control in the state of Hesse means that the government no longer controls the upper house of parliament, the Bundesrat. Germany's 16 federal states are represented in the Bundesrat, with each state granted between three and six votes depending on its population.
A state's votes must be cast as a single block and the loss of Hesse means that the government can depend on only 33 of the Bundesrat's 69 votes. The opposition CDU, on the other hand, can be certain of only 10 votes, representing two states where it has an overall majority.
The CDU and the SPD share power in three states, a fact that could save the government from the parliamentary gridlock that stymied the reform plans of Dr Helmut Kohl's government.
Regardless of the parliamentary arithmetic, Mr Schroder will be tempted to agree a compromise on citizenship that will rob the CDU of a vote-winning issue. The most likely compromise is a proposal by the FDP that would grant German citizenship to all children born in the country but oblige foreigners' children to choose one nationality or another when they reach the age of 18.
This solution would have the benefit of ending the absurdity of German-born children remaining foreigners without admitting the principle of dual citizenship.
