What is the 5-year deadline?

All doctoral candidates must submit their doctoral thesis 5 years after acceptance.

If this is not possible, an extension request must be submitted including the reason why there was not enough time and a 2-year plan how the thesis will be completed within this period (or earlier). Otherwise the supervision of the thesis will be terminated and the acceptance revoked! There is no predefined form for the extension request. It may make sense to refer to parental leave or the other explicit reasons for extension as per § 10 Para. 5, if applicable.