Berlin Faces Record Wave of Citizenship Lawsuits Over Delays

(BERLIN, GERMANY) Berlin’s administrative court has received nearly 2,000 citizenship lawsuits over delayed naturalization decisions by the end of October 2025, a record figure that lays bare a severe backlog in the capital’s naturalization procedures and raises fresh questions about Germany’s promise to become a more welcoming immigration country.

What applicants are doing and why

The lawsuits, known in German law as inactivity actions, are being filed by applicants who say they have waited months with no movement on their citizenship files. Under current rules, people can take legal action if an authority does not decide on their application for three months.

For many of Berlin’s would‑be citizens — many of whom have lived in Germany for years — the courtroom has become the only place where they feel they can force the system to act.

How the backlog developed

The State Office for Immigration, known by its German initials LEA, is at the center of the crisis. Since 2024, the office has been responsible for all naturalizations in Berlin after the state government moved naturalization procedures away from the individual district offices into a single centralized authority.

Supporters of the reform said a central office would bring more consistency and better planning. Instead, the shift has come with an avalanche of pending work. District offices handed over tens of thousands of pending files when the LEA took over in 2024, meaning the new structure did not start with a clean slate.

Many applicants found that, instead of seeing their cases speed up, their files were moved from one authority to another while months went by without clear updates. For some, filing citizenship lawsuits felt like the only way to make sure their applications did not simply get lost in the shuffle.

Key figures at a glance

Operational constraints and staffing

Inside the LEA, staffing shortages are a key part of the problem. The office has 179 posts dedicated to naturalizations, but 40 of those positions remain unfilled. With only around 139 seats actually occupied, the agency is trying to reach a demanding monthly goal of 3,300 to 3,500 applications processed.

This pace would already be challenging for a fully staffed office. With dozens of posts vacant and a large historic backlog, it becomes extremely hard to meet targets or reduce waiting times.

The applicant experience

For applicants, the impact is deeply personal:

• Straightforward cases that used to move more quickly are now taking six to twelve months to process.
• Many people who meet all legal requirements — long‑term residence, clean criminal records, proof of language and civic knowledge — are stuck in limbo, waiting for a file number to turn into a decision.
• Delays can affect life decisions: family travel, job changes, and political participation (only citizens can vote in federal elections).
• Children may age out of simpler rules for minors while their parents’ applications sit undecided.

Lawyers in Berlin say the three‑month inactivity rule is no longer just a last resort but almost part of the normal path to citizenship. Some attorneys report clients already expect to have to file in court because they do not trust the administration to handle cases within a reasonable timeframe.

According to analysis by VisaVerge.com, this routine litigation over delays mirrors a broader tension in Germany between political promises of faster integration and the daily reality inside immigration offices.

If applicants who meet all legal requirements feel forced into citizenship lawsuits just to get an answer, trust in the system may erode and some potential applicants could simply give up on becoming citizens at all.

Proposed federal change and the debate

Political pressure is mounting. The federal government is reported to be considering a change that would dramatically reduce the ability of applicants to use the courts to push for decisions.

• Current rule: file inactivity lawsuits after 3 months of silence.
• Proposed change: extend the deadline to 12 months before such lawsuits can be filed.

Supporters argue the extension would:
– Give offices like the LEA more breathing room.
– Reduce the flood of litigation.
– Allow staff to work more systematically through files.

Critics counter that extending the deadline to twelve months would:
– Remove one of the only effective tools applicants have to fight excessive delays.
– Likely make the backlog worse by reducing legal pressure on offices to move quickly.

Context: law vs. capacity

Germany has recently presented itself as a country that wants to speed up immigration and citizenship. The federal government has passed laws to make it easier for some foreign residents to obtain passports more quickly, and official information from the German Federal Office for Migration and Refugees explains the legal requirements in detail.

But the Berlin situation shows that changing the law is only part of the story; the capacity of local offices to process rising numbers of applications is just as crucial.

Wider implications

Berlin’s experience matters beyond the city itself. As Germany’s largest urban center and a symbolic hotspot for international talent, the capital’s handling of naturalization procedures is often watched as a sign of how well the whole country is managing integration.

Officials in Berlin say they want to work through the backlog and meet higher processing targets, but the mix of centralization, staff vacancies, and rising demand has left the city in a difficult position. Any federal move to push the inactivity lawsuit deadline to twelve months would likely reduce the pressure of court cases in the short term — but at the cost of even longer waits for many people who already feel they have been waiting far too long to become German.