As part of the 125th General Assembly of the Görres-Gesellschaft zur Pflege der Wissenschaft, the Section for Law and Political Science devoted itself to the topic of "Immigration and Belonging - Developments in Migration and Nationality Law". Not only is the topic of migration red-hot internationally, but the citizenship law of the Federal Republic of Germany is also subject to amendments right now. Since the draft law is now available, the timing could hardly be better to discuss this topic in an academic circle. Not least because German law is now completely abandoning the principle of avoiding dual citizenship, which has been upheld in part up to now, and will in future - like most other states in Europe - permit dual citizenship throughout.
The meeting of the Section for Law and Political Science took place on 22 and 23 September 2023. In a total of three thematic panels, internationally renowned experts gave lectures on questions of immigration, citizenship and European citizenship. In the comparative law panel, Turkish and Austrian citizenship law were examined in greater detail.
Attorney-at-law Balazs Esztegar was invited by the Society to present Austrian citizenship law in the context of this comparative law panel. In his approximately 30-minute keynote speech in the New Assembly Hall of the University of Tübingen, he primarily shed light on the mechanisms that the Austrian law contains to enforce single citizenship. In addition to the renunciation of the previous nationality as a general prerequisite for granting citizenship, he also went into more detail on the assurance procedure and, against the background of both Union law and national case law, illuminated the problems associated with this procedure in practice.
The legal and factual difficulties resulting from the ex lege loss of citizenship were also critically discussed. In his lecture, the expert on citizenship law also addressed the lack of clear criteria for granting retention and used a real-life example to show the contradictions of Austrian citizenship law.
All the papers presented at the conference will soon be published in a conference volume.