Merz wants expatriations: SPD leader denies suitability as chancellor

SPD leader Saskia Esken denies Union Chancellor candidate Friedrich Merz’s suitability for the office of Chancellor. “Friedrich Merz is consciously playing with the right-wing populist fire and is not suitable as chancellor of all Germans,” Esken told the star.

Esken said his demand that German citizenship be withdrawn from naturalized people under certain circumstances turns these people into “second-class citizens”: “People whose ‘Germanness’ he obviously sees with reservations.” The SPD leader added: “Friedrich Merz is breaking with what holds us together as a society.”

The reason is statements by the Union Chancellor candidate that Germans with dual nationality could lose their German citizenship again after committing crimes. Merz based his demand on the attack at the Magdeburg Christmas market. “In order to avoid attacks or further crimes, foreign criminals must be expelled after the second offense at the latest,” said the Union’s candidate for chancellor in “Welt am Sonntag”.

In order to be able to expel dual citizens from the country, Merz brought expatriation into play. Merz explained that the naturalization facilitated by the traffic light coalition was fundamentally wrong. Dual citizenship will become “the norm,” said the politician. Of more than 200,000 applicants, around 80 percent wanted to keep their original citizenship. “We are creating additional problems for the country.”

Esken sharply attacked Merz for his thoughts: “This populist and divisive activism creates mistrust of everything foreign and leads to great uncertainty in the migrant community,” said the SPD party leader. “For Merz they are ‘Germans on probation’.”

Merz’s demand is also in the election manifesto of the CDU and CSU: “We are punishing supporting terrorist organizations more consistently and are taking action: expulsion, revocation of the residence permit, loss of German citizenship,” it says. The reversal of the basic option for a double pass is also in the election program. According to the Union, Merz said little that was new.

In principle, German citizenship may not be revoked at all. This is what it says in Article 16 of the Basic Law. If so, then only if it would not make a person stateless and because of a law. This is intended to prevent arbitrary denaturalizations like during the National Socialist era.

However, there are already exceptions to the principle that can lead to the loss of a passport for dual nationals, for example if people fight for the armed forces of another country or for a terrorist organization without the consent of the Federal Ministry of Defense. The Union would set this limit significantly wider in the future.

Almost three million people in Germany have dual citizenship. 70 percent of them have the citizenship of another country in the European Union. This has been possible since 2007. The traffic light government’s citizenship law, which will come into force in 2024, should in future allow people of all nations to retain their old citizenship upon naturalization.