This article about Obtaining Czech Citizenship after long enough time living in the Czech Republic is a transcript of a Live-Stream about the same topic performed by Jan – one of the Co-Founders and Co-Owners of Move To Prague relocation experts. Recording of this livestream can be found here: Obtaining Czech Citizenship. If something is not clear, needs further explanation or if you need any assistance with obtaining Czech Citizenship, fill in the contact form on the right or below and we’ll be happy to help!
3 Ways to obtain Czech Citizenship
There are a couple ways of obtaining Czech citizenship. The first way could be through your ancestors (parents or grandparents). If they were Czech or Czechoslovak, you could obtain your citizenship based on this fact.
The second way could be through your importance to the Czech Republic – the Czech Republic can grant citizenship to anyone the government decides. We think you would need to be a famous actor or a policital refugee to qualify for this though.
And finally the third reason, and probably the most popular, is obtaining Czech citizenship after a long-enough time living in the Czech Republic and integrating into the society.
Advantages and disadvantages of getting Czech citizenship
Starting with the advantages, obviously if you want to live here, once you get the Czech citizenship, you will not need to care about visas or residence permits. You will also have a Czech passport, which means that you can live and move freely within the whole Europe and Schengen area.
Regarding disadvantages, not all countries allow you to have two citizenships, so in order to get the Czech citizenship sometimes you might have to give up your other citizenship.
Requirements for getting Czech citizenship
There are couple prerequisites you need to meet if you want to get Czech citizenship after living in the Czech Republic long enough.
#1 You need to be integrated into the society very well from different perspectives, like family life, social life and also work. That means if you are living here alone, not meeting new people, and working online, paying taxes outside the Czech Republic, most likely you will not get the Czech citizenship. But if you have a family, wife or husband and kids, and/or you have plenty of friends and take part in social groups and activities, then you are definitely more integrated into Czech society and have higher chances of obtaining Czech citizenship.
#2 Don’t be a threat to the Czech Republic and its rights. This could be a random condition, and we don’t see this happening, but you cannot be obviously somehow against the country if you want to get citizenship.
#3 You need to meet plenty of conditions! Let’s go through them, one by one.
- You need to have a permanent residence permit in the Czech Republic. Then it depends, if you are a non-EU citizen you need to have the permanent residence permit for 5 years, and if you are a EU citizen you need to have at least 3 years or be living in the Czech Republic constantly without any breaks for at least 10 years.
- You need to be staying in the Czech Republic for at least half of the time. It doesn’t work the way permanent residency does, but you live the whole time outside of the Czech Republic and still want to get a Czech citizenship. You can stay outside the Czech Republic for up to 2 months in a row and that will still be counted, or 6 months in a row if there’s a serious reason, for example getting sick or giving birth in your own country.
- You can’t have any record in the criminal register.
- You have to pass a Czech language exam. There are some exceptions, for example if you studied a Czech school and had lessons in Czech, or if you are below 15 and above 65 years old you also don’t need to prove the Czech language skills.
- There’s another exam you have to pass, which is about general topics of the Czech Republic, including the constitution, law and basic knowledge of human rights, and also the history of the country.
- You cannot have any debts against the government. For example, if you are a self-employed person you can’t have any debts in social security, health care and income tax. Very important that you have no debts, not only to these big authorities, but also smaller ones like the town hall.
- Need to have proof of income. Basically, you need to prove that you have income and you pay taxes from that income in the Czech Republic for the last 3 years. Don’t need to prove how high the income is, like what happens with types of residence permits (permanent or long term).
How and where to obtain Czech citizenship
First thing you need to do is to collect all the required documents (we will show you what kind of documents below), and take them to the authority responsible for the area where you live to submit. They will keep the documents for up to 30 days to check you in their system, looking for any kind of debts/problems you might have with them (garbage disposal, pet registration etc.).
Afterwards, they will create a recommendation for the Ministry of the Interior and send the entire application to them as well, because the decision will be made there within 180 days (probably a bit more considering previous experiences, it can go from 1 year to 1 year and half or even reach 2 years).
Once you are approved, you need to go back to your local authority and receive a certificate of obtaining the Czech citizenship. Then you need to get all the IDs options (Czech ID – “občanka” or/and Czech passport) and get registered everywhere as a Czech citizen.
List of documents you need to obtain Czech citizenship
- Questionnaire that you can get at the local authority, where you will answer questions about yourself, family, incomes and other basic questions
- Submit a request for the citizenship
- Submit your birth certificate from the country of your origin. If you were born outside the Czech Republic you need to get the document apostille and officially translate it to Czech. Also if you have kids, you need to submit their birth certificates in the same conditions.
- If you are married, you need to submit the marriage certificate (with the same rules of birth certificate). The same applies if you are divorced or a widow.
- Need to get a criminal check from the Czech Republic
- Your personal CV, not the same one you submit for job applications, but one that describes the reasons why you’re applying for the citizenship and what you being doing in the Czech Republic the whole time (for example, “I arrive in the Czech Republic in 2001, I studied Business and Management, became part of social group, then I found a job and I’ve being paying taxes the whole time, marry my wife”, basically reasons why they should give you the citizenship and how are you integrated into the society)
- Submit the exam from the Czech language and the exam of history and government of the Czech Republic as mentioned previously
- Submit a list of all your stays abroad and in the Czech Republic, in order to prove that you have been living here at least half of the time
- Proof of no debts from all the authorities (social security, health care, income tax)
- Confirmation that you haven’t been using “too much” the support system of the Czech Republic (unemployment support for example)
- Proof of income for the last 3 years
If you have any further questions, call us to +420776495655 or send us an e-mail to info@movetoprague.com and we’ll be happy to answer all of them 🙂
Photo by archiv MAFRA, MF DNES
