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The Coalition for the Rights of Migrants and Refugees (CDMiR) requests the Ministry of Justice to make a number of amendments on the Romanian citizenship Law
Comunicat de presă
The Romanian citizenship law has been amended 15 times since 1991. Despite the large number of amendments, the citizenship law is not equally accessible for all types of applicants, it fails to comply with all international conventions to which Romania is a signatory party and it is not harmonised with the complementary legislation on immigration and asylum.
On Thursday 15 June 2017, following the request of the Centre for Public Innovation, on behalf of the Coalition for the Rights of Migrants and Refugees, the Ministry of Justice organised a public debate on the draft bill to modify and amend the Romanian citizenship Law no. 21/1991. The discussions enjoyed the participation of the Minister of Justice, Tudorel Toader, the president of the National Authority for Citizenship, Andrei Tinu, representatives of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the General Inspectorate for Immigration, representatives of the 12 non-governmental organisations within the Coalition, as well as representatives of the UN Agency for Refugees, UNHCR.
The notification previously transmitted by the Coalition to the Ministry of Justice referred to a number of issues on obtaining citizenship, which should also be considered when amending the law:
Officials from the Ministry of Justice present at the debate mentioned that the draft bill currently under debate aims to solve the issue of underage children who lack their own citizenship certificate and are blocked in a bureaucratic deadlock, and does not aim to make other substantial amendments to the Romanian citizenship law. Therefore only the last point of those proposed by the Coalition was solved; however the possibility for stateless children, born in Romania from stateless/foreign parents, to obtain citizenship (the last but one point on the list above) was also discussed during the meeting. The Coalition's representatives, as well as representatives of UNHCR mission in Romania, emphasised that once the laborious and lengthy project associated with any legislative change starts, the possibility should be considered to include amendments that would solve a wider range of issues on the access to citizenship. Participants in the debate agreed to continue, within technical meetings, the discussions on the other aspects of the citizenship law proposed for amendment by the Coalition members.
The Coalition for the Rights of Migrants and Refugees is part of the project Development of a network of active organisations in the field of migration (EMINET), co-funded through a grant from Switzerland through the Swiss Contribution for the extended European Union. For official information please see www.swiss-contribution.ro.
The creation and development of the Coalition is also supported by NIEM project (National Integration Evaluation Mechanism): Measuring and improving integration of refugees and asylum seekers, an international project funded through the European Fund for Migration, Asylum and Integration within a consortium comprising 17 non-governmental organisations from 15 EU member states. For more details please see http://www.forintegration.eu.
On Thursday 15 June 2017, following the request of the Centre for Public Innovation, on behalf of the Coalition for the Rights of Migrants and Refugees, the Ministry of Justice organised a public debate on the draft bill to modify and amend the Romanian citizenship Law no. 21/1991. The discussions enjoyed the participation of the Minister of Justice, Tudorel Toader, the president of the National Authority for Citizenship, Andrei Tinu, representatives of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the General Inspectorate for Immigration, representatives of the 12 non-governmental organisations within the Coalition, as well as representatives of the UN Agency for Refugees, UNHCR.
The notification previously transmitted by the Coalition to the Ministry of Justice referred to a number of issues on obtaining citizenship, which should also be considered when amending the law:
- The Romanian citizenship law does not contain any provisions on vulnerable persons. Unaccompanied minors, elderly people or disabled persons are discouraged to initiate the process of obtaining Romanian citizenship. For instance, in the case of disabled persons, they are declared rejected at the interview for granting Romanian citizenship if they are unable to write a text in Romanian language, despite the existence of a disability certified by a competent authority (e.g. the Evaluation Commission for Adult Disabled Persons within the County/Municipal Direction for Social Work and Child Protection). The specific legislation fails to mention exceptions in the case of vulnerable persons who are not able, for objective reasons, to acquire or to demonstrate history and geography knowledge.
- The European legislation in force does not make any difference between refugees and beneficiaries of subsidiary protection in terms of the content of protection. The Citizenship Law failed to take into account the existence of the status of beneficiary of subsidiary protection. Although, similarly to refugees, the beneficiaries of subsidiary protection are included in the category of beneficiaries of international protection and they have the same social and economic rights in Romania, they may obtain Romanian citizenship after 8 years of stay in Romania, as compared to refugees who only need to stay 4 years.
- The Romanian citizenship law does not currently provide any specific guarantees for children whose parents are stateless persons or who cannot effectively transmit their citizenship to their minor children. According to national legislation, the children of stateless persons (persons who do not have the citizenship of any state) also become stateless and they have to undergo a complex naturalisation procedure provided in Art. 9 of Law 21/1991, thus breaching the child's right to obtain a citizenship. According to Article 7 paragraphs 1 and 2 of the UN convention on the Rights of the Child: “1. The child shall be registered immediately after birth and shall have the right from birth to a name, the right to acquire a nationality and, as far as possible, the right to know and be cared for by his or her parents.”
- The current version of the Citizenship Law provides that minors acquire Romanian citizenship at the same time with their parents, are registered in their parents' citizenship certificate and do not take an oath for citizenship. For this reason, minors who have already acquired Romanian citizenship do not have their own citizenship certificate. The impact of the lack of such document is significant both for the beneficiaries and for the Romanian state's records. Starting June 2016 hundreds of cases have been notified of Romanian citizens who were refused the extension of their Romanian travel documents (passports), because, although they held Romanian identity documents, they were no longer recognised as Romanian citizens. The lack of this citizen certificate for minor applicants also entails the lack of real statistics on the number of persons who became Romanian citizens since 1991 to date.
Officials from the Ministry of Justice present at the debate mentioned that the draft bill currently under debate aims to solve the issue of underage children who lack their own citizenship certificate and are blocked in a bureaucratic deadlock, and does not aim to make other substantial amendments to the Romanian citizenship law. Therefore only the last point of those proposed by the Coalition was solved; however the possibility for stateless children, born in Romania from stateless/foreign parents, to obtain citizenship (the last but one point on the list above) was also discussed during the meeting. The Coalition's representatives, as well as representatives of UNHCR mission in Romania, emphasised that once the laborious and lengthy project associated with any legislative change starts, the possibility should be considered to include amendments that would solve a wider range of issues on the access to citizenship. Participants in the debate agreed to continue, within technical meetings, the discussions on the other aspects of the citizenship law proposed for amendment by the Coalition members.
The Coalition for the Rights of Migrants and Refugees is part of the project Development of a network of active organisations in the field of migration (EMINET), co-funded through a grant from Switzerland through the Swiss Contribution for the extended European Union. For official information please see www.swiss-contribution.ro.
The creation and development of the Coalition is also supported by NIEM project (National Integration Evaluation Mechanism): Measuring and improving integration of refugees and asylum seekers, an international project funded through the European Fund for Migration, Asylum and Integration within a consortium comprising 17 non-governmental organisations from 15 EU member states. For more details please see http://www.forintegration.eu.
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