86,000 Bosnians Give Up Citizenship for Foreign Passports

From 1996 to 2018, a total of 86,755 people renounced their Bosnian citizenship - more than the population of the town of Brcko in northern Bosnia and Herzegovina - according to data that BIRN has obtained from the country's annual migration profile.

Only six people renounced their citizenship in 1996, but in the period from 1999 to 2013, the trend accelerated, with a total of 61,752 giving up their Bosnian passports.

From the start of 2012 until the end of July 2018, a further 25,003 people renounced their citizenship.

More than half of them made the move in order to acquire citizenship of Germany or Austria. The next most popular passports among emigrants were those of Denmark, Norway and Slovenia. Bosnia and Herzegovina has no bilateral agreements with these countries on dual citizenship.

It is estimated that around 1.5 million people who were born in Bosnia and Herzegovina are now living abroad, which represents around 40 per cent of the total population of the country, data from Bosnian security ministry show.

This estimate does not include the emigrants' descendants -second and third generations born in host countries.

Bosnia's Minister of Civil Affairs Adil Osmanovic said on Monday that the country should try to address the issue.

"We are aware of the fact that the German constitution does not allow the signing of an agreement on dual citizenship, but the possibility of reducing the number of those who renounce citizenship should be considered," Osmanovic told FENA news agency.

Osmanovic did not elaborate about possible ways of reducing the numbers of people renouncing Bosnian citizenship in order to take German passports, and did not respond to BIRN's inquiry by the time of publication.

Bosnia's...