French interior minister wants to toughen rules for gaining citizenship

Foreign residents seeking French citizenship should face tougher requirements, Interior Minister Bruno Retailleau has announced.

Mr Retailleau said the conditions to acquire French citizenship need to be ‘raised’, and that departmental prefects will shortly be sent a circular “to toughen the conditions for obtaining nationality by naturalisation”. 

It comes as the government is also set to send prefects instructions to look at how to help legally-resident foreign unemployed people in France – of which the ministry estimates there are 400,000 – find work in sectors facing a lack of employees. 

An official list of sectors facing shortages will be published by September at the latest, the ministry later said.

Will language rules be toughened further?

Mr Retailleau was speaking at a press conference to mark his six months at the helm of the Interior Ministry. 

The right-leaning politician – sometimes accused of leaning to the far-right particularly on immigration – highlighted the incoming rules from last year’s immigration law during the conference. 

“We have tightened a number of conditions for the right of residency in the [2024] immigration law,” he said (quoted by Le Figaro).

Among the notable changes this introduced was tougher French language requirements for some residency cards and for citizenship, something the minister sees as a key mark of integration into French society. 

The new rules included in the law must be in force by January 1, 2026, at the latest but Mr Retailleau has previously said he favours introducing another bill on the subject.

“The right of residency - which is a privilege [“une faveur”] granted to a foreigner living legally on French soil - obviously comes with certain conditions,” he said this week.

“When we want to fulfill the promise of fully integrating a foreigner into our national community [ie. by granting citizenship], there too a certain number of conditions must be met.”

He said “assimilation” is a key factor in this.

The incoming immigration law will already increase the level of French required for people applying for French citizenship to an ‘upper intermediate’ B2 level, up from the current ‘lower intermediate’ B1. 

However, he may wish to increase these further as part of future changes. If so, this would likely require another law to be passed by parliament. It is unclear what precise changes he may legally demand by simply sending out a ‘circular’.

Provisional figures show that last year almost 67,000 people acquired French nationality, including some 49,000 via naturalisation (linked to time spent in France and integration, including 11,000 children obtaining citizenship along with parents), 16,000 via marriage and 2,000 via other family links.

In 2023, the most recent year for which full data has been provided, people from the Maghreb were the most numerous, followed by Russians and Britons. The latter have consistently made the top ten in the years since the Brexit vote. 

Read more: How long did it take you to get French nationality?