© dpa
According to the Senate, there is still much to be done in Berlin when it comes the subject of naturalization. One important building block is the central state naturalization center, which is due to start work at the beginning of 2024, as announced by the Governing Mayor Franziska Giffey.
"It is important that we move forward here, and that is what this coalition has set out to do," Giffey said Thursday in the House of Representatives. The state naturalization center should help speed up procedures and make them more transparent, she said.
In Berlin, the number of naturalizations is 8,000 per year. "Our goal is to get to 20,000," Giffey said. The SPD politician rejected criticism that the Senate is taking too much time on the issue. "We have been working for eleven months on setting up a state naturalization center," she said. But that requires preparation and time, she added.
Giffey admitted that there is still a lot wrong with the naturalization process in Berlin: The districts deal with it in very different ways, which leads to the process taking much longer in some districts than in others. "It's not going the way it needs to go," Giffey said. "We have to change something here."