Updates from the Bierger-Center
Today, April 4th, the Bierger-Center informed LuxCitizenship that they will begin working with appointments for Luxembourg Dual Citizenship applications starting on May 2nd, 2022.
Who is Affected?
This update affects applicants who are required to travel to Luxembourg to make a citizenship application, namely people applying under Article 89 (Reclaiming citizenship through an ancestor alive Jan 1, 1900) or through Article 23 (Citizenship by Option) of the Luxembourg Nationality Act.
People applying under Article 89 of the Luxembourg Nationality Act have a deadline of December 31, 2022 to make their final citizenship application at the Bierger-Center. People applying under Citizenship By Option or Posthumous Citizenship by Option (7/23) have no deadline to travel to Luxembourg but also make their final citizenship application at the Bierger-Center. Applicants under all these citizenship application types are all entered into the same appointment system.
This new rule does not affect people applying for a Certificate of Luxembourg Nationality under Article 7.
More Details
Applicants will receive an appointment confirmation message with a QR code via email. Applicants will need to scan the QR code once they arrive at the Bierger-Center. The Bierger-Center indicates that there will be some kind of IT system available at the entrance to scan the QR code. To the left of the entrance, there is a reception desk with English-speaking staff. You can also ask them for help. You should be aware that they might refer to an appointment as a “Rendez-Vous” as from French. That is the official name of the appointment system.
The Bierger-Center is open Monday through Friday 08:00 a.m.-05:00 p.m. It is closed on Luxembourgish holidays. The Bierger-Center is located at 44 pl. Guillaume II in Luxembourg City. Appointments will be made during normal business hours. The appointment confirmation indicates that the appointment will last 30 minutes, however most of our clients report being done in 20 minutes.
How to Book an Appointment?
LuxCitizenship clients need to use the Declare Travel form on our Travel to Luxembourg Resource Center. This form enables you to declare your planned travel dates, whether booked or not, and to indicate your appointment time preference. LuxCitizenship clients have received the link to the Travel to Luxembourg Resource Center from our team. LuxCitizenship will directly book your appointment with the Luxembourgish government.
The Bierger-Center will begin issuing appointments for LuxCitizenship clients over the next two weeks (until April 18th). They said they are using our appointment requests as a beta to train their staff, so they ask for your patience. LuxCitizenship will directly email you your appointment confirmation with QR code once the appointment is confirmed by the Bierger-Center. Only the Bierger-Center has a say over the final appointment time. They also asked us to inform you that they will have very limited capacity to rebook appointments.
Book Early, Many Applications Left
By all indicators, well over 10,000 and as many as 14,400 applicants still need to obtain an appointment and apply at the Bierger-Center before 12/31/2022 under the Article 89 process alone. This is more people than the Bierger-Center has processed in its busiest year in its history under all citizenship application types combined. This also doesn’t include the people who need to apply under Citizenship by Option, Naturalization, and other application types unrelated to having Luxembourg ancestry. Most probably that means as many as 19,000 more people in total across all application types need to apply for citizenship at the Bierger-Center this year.
We encourage you to declare your travel dates as soon as possible before the system comes online on May 2nd. Appointments will likely fill up fast once the system is public.
Not yet a LuxCitizenship client? Interested in our support in applying for Luxembourg dual citizenship? If you have already completed phase 1 of the dual citizenship application and need to travel to Luxembourg before 12/31/2022 you can find out about and sign up for our services at https://www.luxcitizenship.com/reclaim-luxembourg-citizenship-now-premium-package/