According to the Czech immigration law, foreigners can obtain the Czech citizenship through the options which are prescribed by the applicable regulations. However, there isn’t any straightforward procedure for obtaining the Czech citizenship by marriage, although foreigners married with Czech citizens are entitled to apply for it. Details on this subject are presented in this article.
Our immigration lawyer in Czech Republic can help foreigners who want to obtain the Czech citizenship by marriage with in-depth advice on the legal procedure one should follow after the wedding took place. If you have not yet married your future Czech spouse and you are interested in getting married in this country, you can also rely on our lawyer for advice on the procedures and the documents you should prepare if the event will be registered with the Czech institutions.
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What is the process of obtaining the Czech citizenship by marriage in 2024?
If you are a foreigner interested in moving to Czech Republic on a permanent basis and getting married with your partner who is a Czech national it is necessary to know that you can easily conclude the marriage ceremony as civil procedure or as a wedding ceremony, depending on your wishes.
If you want to obtain the Czech citizenship by marriage, you need to know that you will first have to become a permanent resident and that the marriage itself will not reduce the amount of time that you need to live here in order to gain the right of applying for the Czech citizenship. Here, two basic situation can occur, which are given by the nationality of the foreign partner – citizen of one of the member states of the European Union (EU) and the European Economic Area (EEA) or Switzerland, and citizen of third-countries.
In the beginning, a foreigner moving to Czech Republic can apply for a temporary residence permit, which, after a given period of time, be transformed into a Czech long term residence permit. In Czech Republic, a person can apply for the Czech citizenship by marriage after living on a continuous basis in this country for 5 years, as a national of a third-country state, or after three years, if the person is a citizen of a member state of the EU, EEA or Switzerland.
It must be noted that, even though foreigners can’t receive their Czech citizenship by marriage faster than other categories of foreigners who apply for citizenship by granting, they do benefit from certain advantages with regards to the issuance of the permanent residency, which can be obtained after two years of continuous living in the Czech Republic, and this can have important benefits for their daily life.
What should foreigners know on marriage in Czech Republic?
In the last decades, the procedures for getting married were simplified to accommodate the needs of a changing framework, where more and more international marriages are registered, as well as same-sex marriages or civil partnerships. The same applies for the procedures for divorce and in numerous Western European countries the divorce rates have drastically increased. With regards to the matrimonial trends, we present the following:
- when we refer to international marriages, where a spouse has a different nationality than the other spouse, in Europe it is estimated that approximately 12% of all marriages are mixed marriages (according to Eurostat, Luxembourg and Switzerland have a rate of 18% of international marriages, while in Czech Republic, it stands at approximately 5%, the lowest being in Romania, of approximately 1%);
- the fees for getting married in Czech Republic vary based on the residency – if both parties do not have permanent residency here, the marriage fee is of CZK 3,000 and if one has the permanent residency here, the fee is of CZK 2,000;
- in the case in which the couple prefers a wedding outside the standard working hours of the City Hall and outside its location, an additional fee of CZK 1,000 will apply;
- in 2017, 49% of all the children born that year were born outside a marriage, Czech Republic being on the 11th place on this index in a study comprised of 32 European states;
- the number of divorces declined in Czech Republic (in 2004, there were approximately 33,000 divorces, while in 2016, only 25,000 divorces).
If you want to get married in Czech Republic in 2024 you must know that other marriage registration fees can apply. For instance, according to the Ministry of the Interior of the Czech Republic, it is also required to pay a fee of CZK 500 for the issuance of a certificate which shows that the fiancé has the legal competence of entering into a marriage completed on the Czech Republic’s territory.
The fees presented above have to be paid prior to the initiation of the marriage procedure and they can be paid by cash or through a postal cheque. Our immigration lawyers can offer more information on any other obligations that you may have when getting married here. Our team can also present any additional information to those who have been married for a sufficient amount of time so that the citizenship by marriage formalities can begin.
If you need further assistance on how to obtain the Czech citizenship by marriage, we invite you to contact our lawyer. Our immigration lawyer in Czech Republic can help you with in-depth advice on how to relocate here, on how to apply for a visa if this is necessary and can also provide legal assistance if you want to bring close family members in this country, so do not hesitate to address to our specialist, who can help obtain a Czech long term residence permit.
Obtaining Czech citizenship by marriage is one of the most favorable ways to acquire citizenship in this country, as a person who does not have any Czech ancestry.
This is given by the fact that the procedure is simpler compared to the standard naturalization process, in the sense that it can be completed in a shorter amount of time compared to the standard procedure, which takes 10 years.
As mentioned above, the foreign applicant must be the holder of a residence permit in Czech Republic.
A main preoccupation of the authorities that will evaluate the application for citizenship will be to verify if the marriage is authentic and not completed just so that the foreigner will obtain certain rights, as is the citizenship. If the marriage is a fraud, the applicant can face deportation.
We invite you to contact our immigration lawyer for additional information regarding the procedure for citizenship by marriage in 2024. If you are interested in other legal matters and you want to relocate to Czech Republic in 2024, our lawyers remain at your service.
Our team can help you find out the most suitable options concerning visas, the residence permits you can obtain here based on the visa issues (where applicable) and offer assistance in other related matters.
For instance, you can always contact us in 2024 if you need to appeal a decision made by the Czech authorities concerning your visa application or the application for citizenship. Businessmen can contact us for business immigration assistance.
