Re-acquisition of citizenship of Bosnia and Herzegovina: the decision of the Constitutional Court of BiH in case U-19/22

Author: Azur Prnjavorac, attorney at law and mediator · Last updated: 17 September 2026

Law Office Prnjavorac in Tuzla represents former citizens of Bosnia and Herzegovina living abroad in proceedings for the re-acquisition of citizenship, from the first assessment of whether the conditions can be met, through the residence permit and the guarantee, to the decision on admission. The decision presented here is the reason why that road cannot be shortened: the Constitutional Court confirmed that the legislator may require a year of residence in the country, and the authorities apply that requirement without exception.

What article 14 of the Law on Citizenship provides

The provision under review is article 14 of the Law on Citizenship of Bosnia and Herzegovina, in the official consolidated text published in the Official Gazette of BiH no. 22/16. It reads, in translation: a person whose citizenship of BiH ceased by renunciation or release, in order to acquire or keep the citizenship of another state, may apply for the re-acquisition of BiH citizenship if he or she meets the conditions of article 9, except the conditions in paragraph (1)(a) and (b), and only if he or she has approved temporary residence in the territory of Bosnia and Herzegovina for at least one year immediately before the application, or approved permanent residence.

Two things follow from that wording. First, a former citizen is spared only two of the conditions for ordinary naturalisation: the age of 18 and three years of permanent residence. Second, in place of the three years, a year of approved temporary residence or permanent residence is required. Everything else in article 9(1), from point (c) to point (l), applies to the former citizen in the same way as to any foreigner: knowledge of the language and script, renunciation of the current citizenship unless a bilateral agreement provides otherwise, no expulsion order, no serious conviction, no pending criminal proceedings, no threat to security, a secure source of income, settled tax obligations, a signed declaration of acceptance of the legal order, and a valid guarantee of acquisition of citizenship.

Who brought the case and what was challenged

The request for a review of constitutionality was lodged on 5 July 2022 by Denis Zvizdić, at the time Second Deputy Chairman of the House of Representatives of the Parliamentary Assembly of Bosnia and Herzegovina, which made him an authorised applicant under article VI/3(a) of the Constitution. The request did not challenge the whole of article 14 but the part that refers former citizens to the conditions of article 9, and among those conditions three in particular: point (c), the language and script requirement; point (f), the renunciation of the current citizenship; and point (l), the guarantee of acquisition of citizenship.

The applicant’s argument was historical and practical at the same time. During the war a large number of citizens were forced to leave the country. In order to settle their status in the states that received them, refugees took the citizenship of those states, and the law of some of them, the applicant named Germany and Austria, did not allow multiple citizenship. Those citizens therefore had to renounce the citizenship of BiH. Article 14 now places that group on the same footing as any foreigner seeking naturalisation, which the applicant described as unfavourable, disproportionate, deterrent and discriminatory, relying on the Court’s own statement in decision U-9/11 that the intention of the framers of the Constitution was not to make the return of refugees to their homeland more difficult.

• The language requirement. In the applicant’s view it is not hard to meet but it is humiliating: former citizens are asked to prove that they know their mother tongue.
• The renunciation requirement. The applicant pointed to two comparable groups in the diaspora. Refugees who went to states whose law did not require renunciation, such as the United States, Canada, Australia or France, kept their BiH citizenship, as did those who went to states with which BiH later concluded bilateral agreements on dual citizenship, namely Serbia, Croatia and Sweden. The group that had to renounce now bears a disproportionate burden, because to get BiH citizenship back it must give up the citizenship of the state where it lives. The applicant added that Denmark allowed dual citizenship in 2015 and that Norway, the Czech Republic and Luxembourg followed, so that people who once had to renounce would no longer have to, and estimated the affected group at some 93,000 persons.
• The guarantee. The guarantee of acquisition of citizenship is issued, as a rule, for a period of one year within which proof of renunciation of the current citizenship has to be produced, so the objection to point (f) extends to point (l). According to the applicant, from 2013 to 2022 not a single application for the re-acquisition of citizenship was decided positively.
• Comparison with the region. Serbia, Croatia, Slovenia and North Macedonia, the applicant noted, do not require renunciation of the acquired citizenship from their former citizens who wish to recover it, and the applicant also relied on articles 9, 10, 14, 15 and 16 of the European Convention on Nationality.

The two Houses of the Parliamentary Assembly were asked for their response. Both replied that their constitutional and legal committees had discussed the request, could not reach a single position and left the decision to the Court. That silence later became a point in the decision itself: the legislator never explained the ratio legis of the challenged provision.

The provisions the Court examined

The Court set out the relevant provisions of the Constitution, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the European Convention on Nationality, which BiH ratified with effect from 10 March 2008, and the Law on Citizenship. The overview below shows what each of them provides in short.

What the Court decided and why

On admissibility the Court had no difficulty: it is competent to decide on the constitutionality of provisions of the Law on Citizenship, and the request came from an authorised applicant. On the merits, the Court first narrowed the framework of review. Neither the European Convention on Human Rights nor the other conventions listed in Annex I to the Constitution provide for a right to citizenship as a civil right. The European Court of Human Rights has accepted that citizenship is an element of a person’s identity and that an arbitrary denial of citizenship may raise an issue under article 8 of the Convention, but those are individual rights on which a person can rely as a victim of a violation in a specific case. A possible violation caused by an inadequate application of the provision can therefore be examined only in individual proceedings, not in the abstract review under article VI/3(a). The Court accordingly examined the provision solely in the light of articles I/7(b) and II/5 of the Constitution.

The Court then recalled the principles it had already stated in decision U-9/11: questions of citizenship fall within the internal and exclusive jurisdiction of the state; every state has the right to determine by its constitution and laws who is entitled to its citizenship; the state has a wide margin of appreciation in laying down the conditions for acquiring citizenship, and international law does not restrict it in that; states with a large diaspora sometimes deliberately allow acquisition of their citizenship without release from the previous one, but that is a choice, not an obligation. The Court also noted that the legislator had not answered the request and had thereby failed to explain what purpose the challenged provision was meant to serve.

Turning to article 14, the Court described it as the re-acquisition of BiH citizenship by facilitated naturalisation, intended for former citizens who had to renounce BiH citizenship in order to acquire the citizenship of another state. Unlike other foreigners, such a person may be under 18 and needs only a year of temporary residence or permanent residence, but must meet all the remaining conditions of article 9(1) from (c) to (l). In the Court’s assessment nothing indicated that, in prescribing those conditions, the legislator had gone beyond its margin of appreciation, restricted some other right of the persons concerned or laid down criteria that are arbitrary as such. The reference to the legislation of neighbouring countries, which do not require renunciation, was not relevant to the review of constitutionality, and the Court saw no need to analyse the challenged conditions one by one.

• Article 13 unaffected. The applicant had also expressed doubt about the application of article 13, which allows emigrants who have returned to BiH, and the first and second generation of their descendants, to acquire citizenship without the residence and renunciation conditions. The Court held that article 14 does not call the application of article 13 into question in any way.
• European Convention on Nationality. Nothing in the challenged provisions indicated a breach of the obligations assumed by ratifying the Convention.
• Conclusion. Article 14 in conjunction with article 9(1)(c), (f) and (l) of the Law on Citizenship is consistent with articles I/7(b) and II/5 of the Constitution. Under article VI/5 of the Constitution the decisions of the Constitutional Court are final and binding; the decision was ordered to be published in the official gazettes of BiH, both entities and the Brcko District.
• Votes. The decision was signed by the President of the Court, Valerija Galić. Judge Ledi Bianku attached a separate opinion in accordance with the decision; Vice-President Mirsad Ćeman and Judge Seada Palavrić gave statements of disagreement.

The separate opinion of Judge Bianku

Judge Ledi Bianku joined the majority, as he wrote, with great hesitation, and his hesitation concerned the procedural side of the case. He agreed that neither the Constitution nor the European Convention guarantees a right to a particular citizenship, citing Genovese v. Malta, but recalled that the European Court treats citizenship as an element of a person’s identity, citing Usmanov v. Russia and Ghoumid and Others v. France, so that an arbitrary denial of citizenship may in certain circumstances raise an issue under article 8 of the Convention. That is why the Constitutional Court has to carry out a judicial examination of whether a challenged provision denies citizenship arbitrarily.

In that examination the legislator’s silence mattered. Judge Bianku pointed to the case law of the European Court on the quality of the legislative process: M.A. v. Denmark, where the Court examined the arguments the legislator had weighed in adopting a measure and whether a fair balance had been struck; Animal Defenders International v. the United Kingdom, where the quality of the parliamentary and judicial review of the necessity of a measure was given particular weight; and Garib v. the Netherlands, where the question was not whether Parliament could have adopted different rules but whether, in striking the balance it struck, it had exceeded its margin of appreciation. By not answering the request, the legislator did not help the Court to carry out the constitutionality test. In this case the matter fell within the wide margin of appreciation of the legislator; in other cases, Judge Bianku warned, a court not informed in time of the ratio legis could find a procedural violation of the Constitution.

What the decision means in practice

For a former citizen living in Germany, Austria, Switzerland or elsewhere the decision has one plain consequence: the conditions of article 14 are not going to be set aside by the courts, and any change can come only from the legislator. In practice that means the following.

• Residence in BiH is unavoidable. The application for re-acquisition is admissible only with approved temporary residence for at least one year immediately before the application, or approved permanent residence. There is no exception for the diaspora and no possibility of conducting the whole procedure from abroad.
• Renunciation of the current citizenship is still required, unless a bilateral agreement provides otherwise. Such agreements exist with Croatia, Serbia and Sweden. With Germany and Austria there is none, so the guarantee of acquisition is issued first and proof of release from the foreign citizenship has to follow within the period of its validity. The fact that Germany has allowed multiple citizenship since 27 June 2024 changes the position on the German side, not on the Bosnian side; the position of Bosnian law is described on the page on dual citizenship.
• The language requirement and the guarantee remain. Knowledge of the language and script of one of the constituent peoples has to be shown, and a valid guarantee of acquisition of citizenship has to be held.
• Article 13 is a separate route. An emigrant who has actually returned to BiH, and the first and second generation of descendants who have returned, may acquire citizenship without the three years of residence and without renunciation. Whether a particular person falls under article 13 or article 14 is a question for the first assessment of the case.
• An individual case is not closed by this decision. The Court expressly left open the possibility that an inadequate application of the provision in a specific case may violate individual rights. Such a violation can be raised in the ordinary remedies against the decision of the ministry and, after the remedies are exhausted, by an appeal to the Constitutional Court; more on that on the page on proceedings before the Constitutional Court of BiH.

The procedure itself, from the residence permit through the guarantee to the decision on admission, together with a case from our practice, is described on the page re-acquisition of citizenship of Bosnia and Herzegovina. The general conditions of naturalisation are on the page how to get citizenship of Bosnia and Herzegovina, and the ways citizenship is lost on the page giving up citizenship of BiH. The full text of the decision in Bosnian is published on our page povrat bosanskog državljanstva, odluka Ustavnog suda BiH.