Danes living in the UK - citizenship?

[tyler80]

My Danish OH has now lived in the UK for 7 years and has no plans to return to Denmark. His passport expires next year and that and the recent referendum have made us think about whether it's worth him applying for British citizenship.

Are there any disadvantages to giving up his Danish citizenship and becoming a UK citizen? His current line of work, although based in the UK, means he works exclusively with Scandinavian countries thus jobs in the future may be based there. Would he be in a better position to take up a job in Norway for example, if he was to remain a Danish citizen?

The cost for a single application is £836
www.ukba.homeoffice.gov.uk/sitecontent/documents/aboutus/fees-table-spring-2011.pdf
From the short amount you have written at a good guess your husband will qualify without problems, so long as he has spent 5 years in the UK in total, once you take off possible business trips etc which might shorten the 7 years he has been in the UK.
www.ukba.homeoffice.gov.uk/britishcitizenship/eligibility/naturalisation/standardrequirements/
You are allowed to hold more than one nationality as a British citizen, you need ot check with the Danish authorities if the Danish nationality remains. Just because a passport is expired, it does not usually mean losing a nationality, plus I am guessing Denmark allows dual nationality too.

It's up to you whether you really want to spend £836 on naturalisation, that's alot more expensive than renewing a Danish passport I would imagine.

Denmark does not allow dual nationality hence why we're wondering whether he should make the switch or not

And whilst these things wouldn't bother me, he gets annoyed that he has no right to vote at a national level in either the UK or Denmark

Well that's a bit of a bummer. I'd think long term about acquiring British citizenship then, consequences for any children born later, consequences for moving to another country. It IS an awful lot of money to pay out though.
I do know an American national who voted from the age of 18 in the UK in national elections, she had no idea she was not entitled to!!! Well she is now British, when she found out about her fraudulent voting, of course she didn't own up to it.

My mum was in the same position as your DH. She married my dad in the 60s and was told that if she gave up her Danish citizenship, she wouldn't be able to go back to it later, so she kept it and still has it now (no idea if these rules are still true, but perhaps something to consider).

I'm glad she did because I moved to DK as a young adult and because she was still Danish, I was able to get Danish citizenship (obv as you said, you then have to give up the British) which has given me the same rights as other Danes (important for me regarding studying and uni level with free education and the right to the student grant etc). So I agree, think about consequences for future children as well.

At the end of the day though, they're both EU citizenships so not a massive difference. I'm not sure about the differences between the two for working in other Scandi countries though.

Oh and the other advantage to my mum's case was that I had an operation one summer and was laid up for around a month when dd was 1 year old. My mum came over to help and we just registered her at our flat so that she could have access to a doctor just in case (she is diabetic and did bring enough insulin with her, but you never know if an emergency arises). Being Danish, it just meant a case of popping along to the office to register change of address in the country rather than having to apply etc which she would have had to do if she had been British. Not relevant to your case now, but my mum never thought any of her children would choose to live in Denmark, so you never know what is down the line.

Denmark are very strict on their immigration (one of the strictest in the world?) and they are toughening up again, so that may also be something to consider if you should suddenly decide that you want to live in Denmark in the future (although I know you said you planned to stay in the UK)

The UK does not tell other countries that you have acquired UK nationality. However, there may be some declaration your DH has to sign on his Danish passport application to say that he has not taken up any other nationality?

If you are an EU citizen there should be no difficulty with your moving to Denmark, should the question arise. No idea about the Norwegian angle!

Nope, when you renew a Danish passport, you don't sign anything to say about other nationalities.

As an EU citizen, you can live in Denmark for 3 months before having to apply for a residence certificate (6 months if you are looking for a job).

You really need the residence certificate to live here as the system is completely based around the personal identity number, CPR number, (although it is getting better - when I first arrived 10 years ago, you couldn't even buy a pay-as-you-go simcard without a CPR number, and of course you can).