Report on Citizenship Law: Germany has, over the course of time and due to the substantial political changes in Eastern Europe, lost most of its validity—particularly if one considers that some of the successor states of the USSR are now EU Member States. Although the adoption of the new Nationality Act in 1999 did not bring to an end the public debate on the concept of German nationality, emotions were somewhat calmed when it became apparent that a considerably smaller number of foreign nationals were acquiring German nationality under the new ius soli regime or by naturalisation in comparison to what had been originally envisaged. The Immigration Act 2004, therefore, did not attract much attention in terms of changing the nationality legislation since its focus was on immigration, although an unsuccessful attempt was made to substantially restrict the scope of application of the ius soli rule. Within the reforms of 2007 and 2009, the ius soli principle has been confirmed by the legislation. The acceptance of multiple citizenship in exceptional cases and its other legal consequences have been put in a clear wording as demanded by the constitutional jurisprudence of 2006. In fact, as the result of the current legislation, dual nationality has become the rule rather than the exception, since dual nationality is accepted in around 50 per cent of all naturalisations (see Göbel-Zimmermann/Eichhorn 2010a: 296). In a decision on the acceptance of dual nationality by German nationals residing abroad and applying for naturalisation in their host state, the Federal Administrative Court has concluded from the legislative amendments of Section 25 of the German Nationality Act that the legislator has attributed less weight to the principle of avoidance of dual nationality and a higher weight to the private interests of German nationals residing abroad in retaining German nationality.54 Statistical development The statistical evaluation of the nationality reform of 1999/2000 reveals mixed results: While there is a considerable increase in accepting dual citizenship mainly due to the introduction of ius soli elements, naturalisation numbers still remain at an unsatisfactory low level. As far as the ius soli rules are concerned there are a variety of new administrative tasks. Only in 2008 did the nationality authorities deal with the issue of the ‘option model’ for the first time for a yearly average of 40,000 persons. Concerning the administration of this complicated model, difficulties arose regarding the practical operation and legal uncertainties (for administrative issues see Krömer 2000: 363). An important factor for the operation of the nationality law reform of 1999/2000 is the statistical development of naturalisations. However, one has to be careful when interpreting statistics (see Renner 2004: 176; Göbel-Zimmermann 2003: 65). The number of naturalisations since the mid-1970s remained fairly constant until the end of the 1980s, between 25,000 and 45,000. From 1981 until 1985, 69,000 foreigners were naturalised by regular procedure (discretion) and 117,770 by the legal right to naturalisation (primarily repatriating ethnic Germans). A significant development can be seen if one looks at the statistics from 1991–1995. In the same period there were 489,004 discretionary and 926,283 obligatory naturalisations (Beauftragte der Bundesregierung für Ausländerfragen 1997: 60). The latter category were mainly ethnic Germans in the sense of Article 116 of the Basic Law, who acquired the status of a German upon admission to German territory, and after August 1999 by a certificate of admission whereby they automatically acquired German nationality for themselves and their descendants. 54 24 BVerwGE (Federal Administrative Court) 131, 121 (125). RSCAS/GLOBALCIT-CR 2020/5- © 2020 Author(s)