Prior to June 2024, foreign citizens seeking naturalization in Germany had to wait at least eight years. This long waiting period was significantly shortened by the  government that took office in 2021. The center-left Social Democrats (SPD) and their coalition partners, the environment-oriented Greens and neoliberal Free Democrats, determined that naturalization should generally be possible after five years — and, for people who were deemed to have rapidly integrated into Germany, after three