Generation 2.0 RED’s report on the Citizenship Directorates of the Ministry of Interior

This report is an initiative of Generation 2.0 for Rights, Equality & Diversity (Generation 2.0 RED) which resulted from the meetings and the telephone contact with the heads of the Citizenship Directorates of the Ministry of Interior in the region of Attica, from November 2019 to July 2020, to present the most important chronic issues they face.  

The aim of this report is to inform and raise awareness of all interested parties but specifically to inform the competent bodies. As an organization that has been actively monitoring the issues of citizenship since 2006, we are in regular contact with the Citizenship Directorates, recording the difficulties observed in the process of granting Greek citizenship for the second generation, as well as the naturalization of foreigners, which arise either from bureaucratic difficulties or from legislative gaps.

The first chapter of the report presents specific administrative issues, such as staffing, application  processing pace, setting up of naturalization committees, information of interested applicants, delays in issuance of the necessary ministerial decisions on a number of issues and lack of statistics. The second chapter outlines some good practices that Citizenship Directorates have implemented in order to improve the administrative malfunctions that have arisen. The third chapter briefly presents the condition as it arose as a result of the appearance of the coronavirus (Covid-19). In the fourth and last chapter, observations and recommendations are made to the Ministry of Interior on the issues reflected in this report, in order to improve the current situation in the Citizenship Directorates.

At the end of the report in a special annex, numerical data are presented that reflect the current pace of application processing and result from the information provided to us by the heads of  Citizenship Directorates. In this way we wanted to fill, as much as possible, the information gap that has arisen, due to the non-updating of the statistic by the Directorate of Citizenship of the Ministry of Interior, regarding the system of granting Greek citizenship and the naturalization system.

We warmly thank the Citizenship Directorates (specifically the Citizenship Directorate of Athens, the Citizenship Directorate of Central and Western Attica, the Citizenship Directorate of Northern and Eastern Attica and the Citizenship Directorate of Southern Attica, Piraeus and Islands) for their contribution to the recording of the current situation and for the constructive dialogue on proposals for its improvement.

As Generation 2.0 RED we will continue to monitor and highlight the relevant problems to the competent bodies awaiting their response.

You can read the report here.