Citizenship and nationality laws are among the most difficult and intractable constitutional issues in contemporary political communities. They are also among the most interesting and salient. News that Germany is considering changes in its citizenship laws has major implications, not only for its domestic politics, but for the states from which the bulk of its migrant workers and refugees originate and for its partners in the European Union.
German law combines citizenship and nationality in a very distinctive fashion. Its imperial citizenship law dates from 1913 and expresses, in particularly pure form, one of the main European legal traditions applying in this area, ius sanguinis nationality by blood or ancestral descent. It is a highly exclusive criterion, as may be seen in the contrast between the generosity of German refugee laws in the post war period and the restrictiveness of its citizenship laws. This has ensured that only a small proportion of those who came to Germany for work, notably a mere 10 per cent of the two million Turks, have qualified for citizenship, despite being clearly committed there for life. Similarly, only a tiny number of the seven million foreigners can so far qualify for a citizenship that is so closely bound up with the definition of German nationality.
The official German response has been threefold. Access by refugees seeking to take advantage of liberal legislation on asylum has been restricted in recent years by narrower eligibility. In recent months there have been efforts to send many of the estimated 400,000 Bosnian refugees home, some of them involuntarily, on the grounds that the Dayton peace accords have opened up opportunities for their return. When it became apparent that this was at best premature, at worst impossible of implementation and highly dangerous for those forcibly expelled, the initiatives have been stopped or suspended. And thirdly, there are the efforts to transform the citizenship laws by installing a new qualification, that of birth or ius soli, as the criterion of eligibility. It has been pressed by a group of younger Christian Democrats and enjoys considerable cross party support.
Their arguments are plausible, humane and welcome. A Germany taking the great gamble of European integration to head off nationalism and war, cannot maintain in its domestic laws the very props that sustained its own reversion to these old continental demons. Civic, rather than ethnic, definitions of citizenship and nationality are more appropriate for such a modernising and civilising enterprise. A Germany which has been so generous in playing host to migrant workers and refugees a natural role for Europe's strongest economy and emerging predominant power must find a way to develop the means to accommodate those who have contributed so much to its own development.
It is fitting that this discussion has arisen in parallel with the EU's Inter-Governmental Conference, which is examining how to deepen European citizenship entitlements and to co-operate more closely in justice and home affairs. 1997 has been proclaimed a year of action against racism and xenophobia in Europe, in recognition of the burdens faced by immigrants. Changing Germany's citizenship laws is a necessary part of that endeavour.