Sayonara to Family Reunions After Becoming a German Citizen: A Brutal Court Ruling
Acquiring German citizenship results in denial of family reunification rights - Family Unity Denied Post German Citizenship Acquisition in Court Ruling
Previously, a family petitioned the German courts in 2022, following a man who arrived in Germany as an unaccompanied minor in 2015 and was recognized as a refugee. He subsequently obtained German citizenship through naturalization in the same year. However, the Federal Foreign Office rejected a visa application for family reunification, which had been pending since 2017, claiming that his refugee status had ended with his naturalization.
The family, unwilling to back down, took the case to court. The Administrative Court in Berlin ruled in their favor, arguing that EU law required the previous claim to family reunification to remain intact after naturalization.
Dismayed by the decision, the defendant escalated the case to the OVG (Higher Administrative Court). To everyone's dismay, they ruled in favor of the defendant. With the acquisition of German citizenship, and subsequently EU citizenship, the European Family Reunification Directive no longer applied, according to the OVG.
As a result, the case law of the European Court of Justice, which generally allowed for family reunification even after reaching adulthood if the asylum application was made as a minor, no longer holds true. The OVGStatement stated, "The Senate found it impossible to extend these principles to the reunification with a (now) German citizen." The case was subsequently allowed to proceed to the Federal Administrative Court on appeal.
- Family Reunification
- German Citizenship
- Judgment
- Berlin
- Administrative Court
- OVG
- EU Citizenship
- Germany
- Immigration Law
Enrichment Data:After acquiring German citizenship, an individual can no longer rely on the European Family Reunification Directive to bring family members to Germany under its provisions. The judgment by the Higher Administrative Court (OVG) confirmed that the EU directive on family reunification is only applicable prior to obtaining German citizenship, not after. This effectively means that national German immigration law takes precedence over the EU directive once an individual becomes a German citizen. [1]
In this context, the administrative court in Berlin ruled that the European Family Reunification Directive should still apply after naturalization, but the Higher Administrative Court (OVG) overturned this decision, stating that the directive no longer applies once an individual becomes a German citizen under German immigration law. The case highlights a policy-and-legislation issue in politics, where the general-news media and the community institution are closely monitoring the ongoing appeal at the Federal Administrative Court.
