Switzerland’s naturalisation policy may change after a court ruling this week, reported SRF. On Wednesday, the Federal Supreme Court sided with a Turkish man whose citizenship application had been left in limbo for five years by the State Secretariat for Migration (SEM) over a traffic offence committed during his application process. SEM had treated the infraction as sufficient grounds to suspend the procedure indefinitely. The court disagreed, insisting that officials must assess applicants more holistically—even those with a criminal record.
The decision is likely to reshape the rules on applying for citizenship in Switzerland, according to a public law professor. While courts had previously ruled that no single criterion should outweigh all others in assessing integration, this latest judgment is the first to state explicitly that SEM cannot rely on a fixed penalty threshold to deny or delay naturalisation.
Peter Uebersax, professor emeritus of public law, told SRF he was unsurprised by the ruling, which he said aligns with case law from recent years. However, what is new is the court’s clear position that SEM must carry out a case-by-case analysis, even for applicants with criminal convictions.
That may mean abandoning rigid waiting periods tied to the severity of a penalty. At the very least, SEM will need to treat those periods as indicative rather than prescriptive, said the legal expert.
This shift could complicate the naturalisation process. A case-by-case review demands more effort than simply consulting a list of simple strict rules.
The ruling does not mean that criminal records will no longer matter—only that they cannot automatically disqualify someone. This particular case involved a minor, non-intentional traffic offence. Someone convicted of a serious crime will remain unlikely to be naturalised. But small infractions should not trigger disproportionate delays, if this case is applied as a precedent.
The now-contested rigidity of SEM’s approach reflected a political desire to raise the bar for citizenship. The Handbook on Citizenship was designed in part to promote consistency and predictability in the naturalisation process. But as the court made clear, consistency must not come at the expense of fairness.
More on this:
SRF article (in German)
For more stories like this on Switzerland follow us on Facebook and Twitter.