In our blog series "Judgment of the Week" we regularly analyze the most important judgments in the field of labor migration and skilled immigration. This time we have devoted ourselves to a judgment of the Weimar Administrative Court (VG Weimar, decision of June 11, 2024, ref. 1 K 135/24 We), which makes it clearer than ever that immigration authorities are liable for poor organization, insufficient and untrained staff and generally slow work speed or inactivity. According to the VG Weimar, the workload that has existed for years is no excuse for the massive delay in processing applications.
What had happened?
In the proceedings before the Administrative Court of Weimar, the plaintiff had applied for naturalization at the immigration authorities in September 2023 and had submitted or transmitted all the documents for this purpose. The authority then informed them in January 2024 (i.e. 3 months after receipt of the application) that the application had been received and that a processing period of several months could now be expected. In January 2024, the plaintiff filed a lawsuit against this with a lawyer specializing in naturalization law for inaction, since the three-month processing time for naturalization applications in accordance with Section 75 of the Administrative Court Act had already expired.
How did the court decide?
The administrative court ruled for the foreign plaintiff that the immigration authorities should have already decided on the naturalization application. The foreigner therefore won the action for failure to act. The authority could not justify its failure to act by citing a lack of staff or overload. According to the judge, it must be assumed that the naturalization authority is structurally overloaded on an ongoing basis, which was not counteracted in a timely manner by increasing the number of staff sufficiently. In the present case, the immigration authorities had not even checked the documents.
What does the verdict mean?
The ruling shows, as rarely as it does clearly, that the long decision-making times at the immigration authorities are unlawful. In Germany, foreigners sometimes have to wait months or even years for a decision on their applications. It is not uncommon for residence documents to expire, which regularly leads to serious consequences for the foreigner. The authorities then repeatedly justify themselves by saying that they are not to blame for the damage caused due to a lack of staff. The Weimar Administrative Court once again clearly shows that this is indeed the fault of the immigration authorities. The staffing problems have existed for years and have still not been resolved. The immigration authorities are liable for this.
The ruling is thus part of a long tradition of similar case law by the administrative courts. In this respect, it is consistent with established case law that if the authority justifies an excessively long processing time with excessive workload, this is only permissible as a justification if it is a temporary situation to which no short-term organizational measures can be responded to (BVerfG, decision of January 16, 2017 - 1 BvR 2406/16 -, juris para. 9 with further references; OVG Berlin-Brandenburg, decision of July 27, 2017 - OVG 3 M 92.17 -, juris para. 7; Saxon OVG, decision of February 14, 2023 - 3 E 2/23 -, juris para. 9). This has long since ceased to be the case given the ongoing structural overload of the authorities.
You can find further case law in our VISAGUARD case law database .
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