Longer period of residence required for citizenship

Another significant change concerns the residence accepted as part of the required period of residence.

“Once the amendments enter into force, only residence with a residence permit will be counted towards the required period of residence. The time spent in Finland without a residence permit will not be counted as part of the required period of residence. The time it takes to process an asylum application, for example, will no longer be counted towards the required period of residence. For beneficiaries of international protection, the counting of the period of residence will begin from the day when a continuous residence permit was issued,” says Mari Luukkonen, Process Owner, who is in charge of the citizenship application process.

The rules regarding residence abroad during the required period of residence are changing, too. Once the amendments have entered into force, a total of 365 days abroad will be accepted as part of the required period of residence. Up to 90 of these days may be from one year immediately preceding the citizenship decision.

“Fewer days abroad will be accepted as part of the period of residence, but the rules for what counts as residence abroad have been simplified, which will help the equal treatment of applicants when applying the law to their applications. In addition, it will be easier than before for the applicant to assess when he or she will achieve the required period of residence,” says Luukkonen.

The amendments to the Citizenship Act apply to all citizenship applications submitted on or after 1 October 2024. Applications submitted before 1 October 2024 will be decided in accordance with the old version of the Citizenship Act. The amendments do not affect citizenship declarations. Citizenship declarations can be submitted by Nordic citizens and former Finnish citizens, for example.

Backlog of citizenship applications

At the moment, there are approximately 28,000 pending citizenship applications. The number of applications is expected to increase. 

“There is a long waiting time because the number of incoming applications has been exceptionally high in recent years. Another reason for longer waiting times is that we have received lots of applications that do not meet the requirements. This will affect the processing times even though we have already made the processing more fluent,” says Luukkonen.

The average processing time for a citizenship application is currently 9–31 months. The processing time depends on how long it takes to verify that the requirements are met. This is the case with applications where there are challenges related to the establishment of the applicant’s identity, for example.

The Finnish Immigration Service aims to clear the backlog of citizenship applications gradually by 2027.

“Unfortunately, clearing the entire backlog of applications will take a long time because the number of applications has increased considerably at the same time as there have been significant changes in legislation. We are implementing several different measures and development initiatives in order to achieve the one-year goal. One of these measures is to organise our application processing and the tracking of applications in a new way. For example, applications that do not require the applicant to submit additional information will be directed to a faster processing of less than one year. In addition, we will ensure that the statutory requirement of having applications of beneficiaries of international protection and stateless persons decided within one year will be met for all applications that become pending on or after 1 October 2024,” says Luukkonen.

Further information for the media

• Website: Finnish citizenship | Finnish Immigration Service (migri.fi)
• Website: Citizenship declaration | Finnish Immigration Service (migri.fi)