Germany keeps race at heart of citizenship

THE LATEST attempt to reform Germany's anachronistic law on citizenship has been sacrificed on the altar of government unity.

Threatened with the demise of the coalition, Chancellor Helmut Kohl's junior partners, the Free Democrats, abandoned plans this week to support a change in the racially motivated rules on nationality.

Their U-turn robs hundreds of thousands of children born in the country of the chance to automatically become German citizens.

Since 1913, a German has been defined as a person with German blood in his or her veins.

Millions of "ethnic Germans", whose ancestors had been settled in Russia by Catherine the Great, have "returned" to the land of their forefathers, many unable to utter so much as a Guten Tag. They do, however, enjoy all the trimmings of the welfare state, including a passport, subsidised language courses and generous resettlement grants.

Immigrants, their children and their children's children brought up and educated in Germany have, meanwhile, remained nationals of the old country.

Unlike most other states in Europe, Germany does not grant citizenship to people who are merely born and resident in Germany.

An estimated seven million "foreigners" are reckoned to be living in Germany. The Free Democrats, the opposition Social Democrats, and some leading politicians in Chancellor Kohl's party, have recognised that the current practice hinders their integration.

After protracted horse-trading, the Social Democrats struck a compromise with the liberal elements in the government.

Their amendment, which was due to go to the Bundestag later this month, proposed to grant automatic citizenship to the children of "foreigners", in cases when at least one parent had been born in Germany.

In practice, this change would have mostly affected third-generation "Gastarbeiter" - workers imported in the Sixties for tasks deemed even then too menial for the natives.

At the age of 18, such "new Germans" would have still had to choose between their German passport and the nationality of their grandparents, because Bonn does not recognise dual citizenship. And the amended law would have retained the overwhelming priority accorded to genetic origin.

But even this minor relaxation proved too radical for the right. Bavaria's Christian Social Union, the most conservative faction in the governing block, had vehemently opposed any change.

In the end, the mainstream represented by Chancellor Kohl was forced to come down in favour of the Bavarians. Earlier this month, Free Democrat defectors had inflicted an unprecedented defeat on the government, siding with the opposition on the vote on a controversial bugging law.

After that fiasco, the Bavarians made it clear that their liberal partners would not get away with another act of defiance. "Anyone from the FDP who votes with the SPD on citizenship law would vote against the coalition and destroy its basis for co-operation," warned Bernd Protzner, the General Secretary of the Christian Social Union. The FDP heard the message and surrendered.

The row and eventual impasse over this issue is a perfect illustration of the paralysis in Bonn. In the past four years, Chancellor Kohl has had to shelve virtually all his reform plans because of sniping from the wings. With elections approaching and the coalition heading for defeat, the turmoil is set to become worse.

Not content with shooting down the nationality law, the Bavarians are upping the stakes, demanding tighter restrictions on foreigners already resident in Germany.

That in turn is likely to provoke a backlash from the Free Democrats, who must urgently demonstrate their enduring liberal spirit to their dwindling supporters.

None of this is improving Mr Kohl's electoral chances. The latest poll puts the CDU-CSU block 11 points behind the resurgent Social Democrats, while the FDP is teetering on the brink of extinction.