Introduction

This webpage is a small project illustrating the extreme waiting times faced by applicants to the BVA of the StAG §5 citizenship route, designed to redress citizenship not passed down by parents due to anti-constitutional discriminatory laws in place after 1945.

I made a Freedom of Information Request to the BVA and recieved data for each month from August 2021 to December 2024 of both the number of applications placed, and the number of applications processed. On this basis, I calculated the average processing speed of the BVA in 2024, and extrapolated out to predict processing times for future applications, assuming that the processing speed remains the same, and number of applications remains the same.
The results are obscene. A person placing their application today (Aug 2025) would be waiting 125 months, or until January 2036. If you put in an application just before the law expires in Aug 2031, you would wait 349 months, until 2060. The fact this problem is escalating all the time, and that fact that the federal government and the BVA do not allocate a proportional amount of resources to their processing is a scandal. The employees at the BVA are of course not to blame, and have an unforgiving workload.
I have placed another Freedom of Information request for applications up to May 2025 in the same month, but have not yet received a response.

Below, you can input the date that the BVA allocated you an Aktenzeichen, and see on the basis of this extrapolation, when you could expect to receive your result. You can look at the graphs below to see the actual and extrapolation of applications submited, applications processed, and the total backlog. At the bottom section, you can find the raw data provided to me by the BVA. It aditionally contains information about the number accepted, rejected and transfered to another department. I have included these three under the "processed" banner for the purposes of my clasifacation.

If you are in Germany, please write to your MdB and raise attention to this matter.

Select a Date

Application Processing Over Time

Raw Data

For any media enquiries, questions or updates, please contact me at stag5bva@gmail.com