As part of an ongoing digitalisation of its administrative services, the city of Berlin has announced that it should finally be possible to register online before the end of this year. 

Online Anmeldung should be possible from 2022 in Berlin

Completing a registration is one of the first and most important steps that newcomers to Germany have to undertake. Without your registration certificate, you can’t open a bank account, receive your salary or get health insurance. But up until now getting registered has been far from easy, requiring an in-person visit to your local citizens’ office, where appointments are often not available for weeks or even months.

Now, however, city authorities are intending to significantly expand the range of administrative services that people can complete via the internet, which should include registration (Anmeldung) and re-registration (Ummeldung) following a change of address, by the end of this year. 

Berlin digitising hundreds of administrative processes

State Secretary for Administrative Modernisation, Ralf Kleindiek, told dpa that it was already possible to undertake 130 different services online, including applying for housing benefit and registering new businesses, as well as issuing licences for doctors and pharmacists.

A further 106 offers should follow in the coming months and years. “We are currently working on about 35 more for this year, and at least the same number will follow next year,” Kleindiek said.

As well as registration appointments, this should include other more bureaucracy-heavy processes, such as applying for and extending ID cards. “We will digitise the process as much as possible under federal law,” he said, adding that even so identity cards and German passports will in future still have to be picked up in person.