Finland is shaking things up with its citizenship rules, effective October 1, 2024. The country aims to streamline the naturalization process while promoting successful integration and fairness for all applicants
Key Changes to the Finnish Citizenship Process
- Longer Residency Period: The standard residency requirement increases from five to eight years. This change ensures applicants are well-integrated into Finnish society before applying for citizenship.
- Language Proficiency Benefit: Applicants with sufficient language proficiency can apply for citizenship after five years of residency, highlighting the importance of language skills in integration.
- Valid Residence Permit Requirement: Only time spent in Finland with a valid residence permit will count toward the required residency period.
- Restrictions on Time Spent Abroad: Applicants can spend up to 365 days outside Finland, but only 90 days in the year before the citizenship decision.
These changes will affect all citizenship applications submitted on or after October 1, 2024. However, citizenship declarations for Nordic or former Finnish citizens will remain unchanged.
The Finnish Immigration Service is handling a backlog of around 28,000 pending citizenship applications, with processing times ranging from 9 to 31 months. To tackle this, they plan to reduce processing times to one year for most applications by 2027, prioritizing applications from beneficiaries of international protection and stateless persons.
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