23 Illegally Stripped of Danish Citizenship Due to Law Misinterpretation

In June last year, Denmark's highest court concluded that the law had been misinterpreted regarding a woman who became a Danish citizen in 2005, when she was nine years old. Her father was born in Vietnam, but was a Danish citizen, and her mother was a French citizen. The woman herself was born in Vietnam.

In 2021, the then government reinterpreted the law, which resulted in the woman being stripped of her citizenship after 16 years as a Danish citizen. The argument was that her father was not a Danish citizen when she was born. Since the Supreme Court concluded that the reinterpretation of the law was incorrect, she has regained it.

Now, documents that Politiken has accessed show that an additional 22 people have been affected in the same way. Denmark's Minister of Migration Kaare Dybvad Bek (S) tells the newspaper that there may also be cases where people have been denied applications for Danish citizenship due to the law being misinterpreted.