Austria – Legal and Policy Framework of Migration Governance

The report aims at both outlining the history of migration to Austria, the socio-economic, political and cultural context surrounding migration and mapping the institutional frameworks. In the first section, a statistical overview will be presented, followed by sections on the above mentioned contexts, constitutional organisation and principles regarding migration. Chapter four will present the relevant legislative and institutional framework in the fields of migration and asylum. Chapter five is mapping the legal status of foreigners, followed by the last chapter on reform caused by the “refugee crisis”.

Austria has a long tradition of being a destination country for migrants and refugees, a country that for decades promoted labour migration and admitted refugees during the communist era of Eastern Europe as well as during the time of the Balkan Wars. The notion of the latest advent of mass migration to Austria relates to the increasing number of asylum applications since 2013 and in particular in 2015. In that year alone, application numbers reached a six decade high of 88,340 persons, while thousands of others crossed federal territory for their onward journey. Besides the quantity and frequency of immigration, this latest phase also displays novelties concerning the composition of the newcomers in terms of countries of origin. Arguably, the three largest groups of asylum applicants in 2015, namely Syrians, Afghans and Iraqis, are relatively new to Austria, with their numbers increasing by 1,265 per cent, 430 per cent, and 232 per cent respectively between 2011 and 2017. The federal overall policy goal however, aimed at reducing the number of newcomers in the long run. In 2016, the entitlement to asylum was accordingly limited initially to three years and family reunification was restrained through application time limits. The federal government also introduced a unilateral annual quota for asylum applications that allows for acting upon an emergency decree and suspending further processing of applications upon exhaustion. Apart from state internal conflicts, border management and the distribution of refugees from hotspots became highly contested issues in Austria’s relationship to other EU member states. While the principle of asylum is deeply embedded in the Austrian constitution and European Union law, the governance of immigration and asylum has in recent years been repeatedly impeded by the Constitutional Court (VfGH), which intervened in both federal and provincial laws that aimed at restricting refugee’s rights and entitlements. It was not only the state and its institutions that affected the life of immigrants and refugees, the so-called ‘refugee crisis’ has doubtlessly also had an impact on the Austrian political landscape. It was a top priority topic on the political agenda paired with strong public opinions. Accordingly, in the wake of the crisis, the federal government underwent a reconfiguration with party internal exchanges of prominent figures such as the interior minister and the chancellor in early 2016. During the national elections of 2017, asylum and migration remained highly salient topics. The major winning parties were the right-wing FPÖ, which had had a strong ownership of the issue for decades, and the conservative ÖVP, whose lead candidate had previously been foreign minister and had particularly pushed an agenda for order and security.