Federal Act
on Swiss Citizenship
(Swiss Citizenship Act, SCA)

¹ A nat­ur­al­isa­tion de­cision may be de­clared null and void by the SEM if it has been ob­tained by us­ing false in­form­a­tion or by con­ceal­ing ma­ter­i­al facts.

² The nat­ur­al­isa­tion de­cision may be de­clared null and void with­in two years of the SEM be­com­ing aware of the leg­ally rel­ev­ant cir­cum­stances, and at the latest with­in eight years of the nat­ur­al­ised per­son ac­quir­ing Swiss cit­izen­ship. A new two year lim­it­a­tion peri­od be­gins after each in­vest­ig­at­ive act that has been no­ti­fied to the nat­ur­al­ised per­son con­cerned. The lim­it­a­tion peri­ods are sus­pen­ded dur­ing ap­peal pro­ceed­ings.

³ Sub­ject to the same re­quire­ments, a nat­ur­al­isa­tion de­cision un­der Art­icles 9–19 may also be de­clared null and void by the can­ton­al au­thor­ity.

⁴ Nullity ex­tends to all chil­dren whose Swiss cit­izen­ship is based on the nat­ur­al­isa­tion de­cision that has been de­clared null and void. Ex­emp­ted there­from are chil­dren who:

a.

at the time of the de­cision on the de­clar­a­tion of nullity are over the age of 16 and who meet the res­id­ence re­quire­ments of Art­icle 9 and the per­son­al re­quire­ments of Art­icle 11; or

b.

would be­come state­less as a res­ult of the de­clar­a­tion of nullity.

⁵ After the de­clar­a­tion of nullity of a nat­ur­al­isa­tion be­comes leg­ally bind­ing, two years must elapse be­fore a new ap­plic­a­tion for nat­ur­al­isa­tion may be made.

⁶ The wait­ing peri­od in para­graph 5 does not ap­ply to chil­dren in­cluded in the de­clar­a­tion of nullity.

⁷ The for­feit­ure of the iden­tity doc­u­ments shall be ordered when the de­clar­a­tion of nullity is is­sued.