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ANALYSIS: Could Austria ever change the rules to allow dual citizenship?

As neighbouring Germany prepares to pave the way to allow dual citizenship, Austria still seems stuck on its strict rules. How likely is the situation to change in the country?

Published: 20 October 2022 17:21 CEST
Updated: 2 March 2023 13:40 CET

An Austrian passport (© Amanda Previdelli / The Local)

Austria has some of the strictest naturalisation rules in Europe. Besides being expensive (with fees and costs totalling more than €2,000 in some cases), the process usually means applicants need to renounce their original citizenship.

Many foreign residents are reluctant to do so for reasons ranging from property and inheritance issues in their home country. Others simply feel connected to both Austria and their home country but are not willing to renounce their original citizenship.

Hence why many countries allow dual citizenship.

An immigrant in Austria who has parents in their home country and children in Austria, might, understandably, want to hold nationality of both.

The dual citizenship debate is set to be sparked off once again in Austria with neighbouring Germany set to bring the issue to their Bundestag before Christmas with the aim of easing the rules, as our colleagues at The Local Germany reported.

Hearing the debate in a neighbouring country with similar immigration, integration and worker shortage issues is likely to set restart the same debate among Austrians. But dual citizenship has never been a consensus issue in Austria, with parties diverging on their opinions,

What are the rules in Austria now?

Dual citizenship is simply not allowed for most people in Austria. This not only means that applicants have to give up citizenship of their own country to naturalise but also that Austrians living abroad would have to give up being Austrian citizens if they wish to have full rights (including voting) where they live.

According to the law, there are only two cases when dual citizenship is allowed in naturalisation cases.

First, if the retention of original citizenship is in the Republic of Austria’s interest–usually due to a person’s achievements or status. A famous case is that of Styria-born Arnold Schwarzenegger. The actor and politician asked (and was granted the right) to be able to retain his Austrian citizenship as he naturalised as a US citizen in 1983.

Second, if personal reasons are worth considering, the law doesn’t provide any specific examples and an exception would depend on personal circumstances.

Attorney Dr Wiesflecker, from Law Experts Rechtsanwälte-Attorneys, said: “We often argue that the person has a leadership role in his field, especially compared to other Austrians of his industry.

“The process involves submitting a lengthy application detailing the applicant’s life and reasons for wanting dual citizenship.”

It’s important to note that if a person is a dual citizen by birth – meaning one parent is Austrian and another isn’t – they are allowed to keep both citizenship. Another important exception concerns victims of the National Socialist (Nazi) regime.

In September 2020, the Austrian government introduced an amendment to the Austrian Citizenship Act, which allowed victims (and their descendants) of the national socialist regime to apply for dual citizenship.

Why are they changing the rules in Germany?

The German government is working on a modernisation of its Citizenship Act. It intends to allow multiple citizenships and make the process faster and simpler.

“Immigrants who want to stay in Germany permanently should be given the opportunity to take part and contribute fully through naturalisation. The modernisation of the Citizenship Act is intended to create the right framework for this,” a federal Interior Ministry spokeswoman told The Local.

“Multiple citizenships should generally be permitted. For naturalisation, it will no longer be necessary to give up your previous citizenship.”

The 2021’s coalition agreement between the traffic light parties – the Social Democrats (SPD), liberal Free Democrats (FDP), and Greens brought to the German government that advocated modernising the citizenship law, adapting it to the reality of an immigration society.

Filiz Polat, Migration and Integration Speaker for the Greens in the Bundestag, told The Local that permitting dual nationality was a “long overdue” change.

“A modern citizenship law is essential for an immigration country like Germany,” she says. “Citizenship will become an enduring bond of legal equality, participation, and belonging.”

Does Austria need to allow for a dual citizenship law?

That would, of course, depend on the point of view. Based on the arguments brought by the German leaders, then yes, Austria is due a modernisation of its laws.

An Austrian flag on top of the Hofburg Palace in Vienna. Image: Alex Halada/AFP

Similarly to Germany, Austria is a country of immigration. Statistik Austria showed that one in four residents in the country has a ‘migration background’. That meant around 2.24 million people.

The number is high, but it gets even more impressive when we understand what was considered as having a migration background: people whose parents were both born abroad. Persons with one parent born in Austria do not have a “migration background”, according to this definition.

The number of foreign citizens, meaning those without Austrian citizenship, is also high. At the start of 2022, there were around 1.6 million foreigners living in Austria, according to data from Statista.

Figures from the City of Vienna show that at the beginning of 2021, there were 805,039 foreigners living in the capital, which is almost 42 percent of the city’s population.

Several voices in Austria have for years argued that this poses threat not just to the integration of these people but to democracy itself

Georg Lauß, a Politics teacher from the Pedagogical University of Vienna, said: “One can be of the opinion that it is not a problem if 15 percent of the population are not allowed to vote. But what if it’s 20 or 30 percent, so when is the point reached where we can no longer speak of a democracy?”

Will Austria change its rules soon?

This is a never-stopping issue in a country with hundreds of thousands of foreigners – a number that keeps growing even if immigration simply stops (many foreigners are people born in Austria to non-Austrian parents).

This year, Federal President Alexander Van der Bellen brought it up again when he said he believed the “hurdles” for citizenship are too high. It immediately brought responses from left and right.

Chancellor Karl Nehammer, from the conservative party ÖVP, has dismissed proposals entirely, saying that a “softening” of the process was “out of the question”.

On several occasions, Austria’s People’s Party ÖVP has already said that any relaxation of the current naturalisation rules would “depreciate” Austrian citizenship.

However, Vienna Mayor and SPÖ leader in the capital Michael Ludwig said “it makes sense” to make adjustments to the rules.

“The Green position is very clear: We see it the same way as the Federal President,” stated the Green Minister of Justice Alma Zadic. On the other side of the spectrum, the far-right FPÖ has always been vehemently opposed to any changes that could ease the process, including allowing for dual citizenship.

New rules require a new government

In the end, a coalition as it is in Austria, with the main party ÖVP and junior party Greens, is unlikely to bring any changes anytime soon.

The next parliamentary elections are set for 2024, though. This is when Austria decides on a new National Council and chancellor.

NATIONALRATSWAHL | Sonntagsfrage IFDD/PULS 24

SPÖ: 28% (-3)
FPÖ: 24% (+3)
ÖVP: 23% (+3)
GRÜNE: 10%
NEOS: 10% (-1)
Sonstige: 5% (-2)

Änderungen zur letzten Umfrage vom 07. Juli 2022

Verlauf: https://t.co/roFKecgW7s #nrw #NRWahl pic.twitter.com/DeidARt3iW

— Österreich Wählt (@Wahlen_AT) October 18, 2022

Things look tricky for Austria. Current coalition partners are plummeting in polls while the centre-left SPÖ e and far-right FPÖ climb. As it stands, a coalition between SPÖ-ÖVP looks likely – though the growth of the Greens and liberal NEOS could see Austria’s own “traffic light” coalition between SPÖ-Greens-NEOS.

In the first case, such a delicate combination would mean that tricky and lower priority issues (such as, let’s face it, allowing foreign people, the non-voters, to naturalise in a more accessible and less demanding process) would likely be dropped in favour of more stable compromises.

Meaning: it’s unlikely that the SPÖ would spend political clout trying to pass something like dual citizenship.

In the second case, changes could become more likely, especially if the modernisation of the laws in Germany puts further pressure on domestic changes in Austria.

But that remains to be seen, mainly depending on the 2024 election results.

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With the German far right coming out on top in two state elections earlier this month, the socialist-led national Berlin government has reimposed border controls on Western frontiers that are supposed to see freedom of movement in the European Union’s Schengen zone.

The Netherlands government, which includes the party of Dutch far-right leader Geert Wilders, announced on Wednesday that it had requested from Brussels an opt-out from EU rules on asylum, with Prime Minister Dick Schoof declaring that there was an asylum “crisis”.

Meanwhile, new British Prime Minister Keir Starmer of the left-wing Labour Party paid a visit to Rome for talks with Italian counterpart Georgia Meloni, whose party has neo-fascist roots, to discuss the strategies used by Italy in seeking to reduce migration.

Far-right parties performed strongly in June European elections, coming out on top in France, prompting President Emmanuel Macron to call snap elections which resulted in right-winger Michel Barnier, who has previously called for a moratorium on migration, being named prime minister.

We are witnessing the “continuation of a rightward shift in migration policies in the European Union,” said Jerome Vignon, migration advisor at the Jacques Delors Institute think-tank.

It reflected the rise of far-right parties in the European elections in June, and more recently in the two regional elections in Germany, he said, referring to a “quite clearly protectionist and conservative trend”.

Strong message

“Anti-immigration positions that were previously the preserve of the extreme right are now contaminating centre-right parties, even centre-left parties like the Social Democrats” in Germany, added Florian Trauner, a migration specialist at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel, the Dutch-speaking university in Brussels.

While the Labour government in London has ditched its right-wing Conservative predecessor administration’s plan to send asylum seekers to Rwanda, there is clearly interest in a deal Italy has struck with Albania to detain and process migrants there.

Within the European Union, Cyprus has suspended the processing of asylum applications from Syrian applicants, while laws have appeared authorising pushbacks at the border in Finland and Lithuania.

Under the pretext of dealing with “emergency” or “crisis” situations, the list of exemptions and deviations from the common rules defined by the European Union continues to grow.

All this flies in the face of the new EU migration pact, agreed only in May and coming into force in 2026.

In the wake of deadly attacks in Mannheim and most recently Solingen blamed on radical Islamists, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s government also expelled 28 Afghans back to their home country for the first time since the Taliban takeover of Kabul.

Such gestures from Germany are all the more symbolic given how the country since World War II has tried to turn itself into a model of integration, taking in a million refugees, mainly Syrians in 2015-2016 and then more than a million Ukrainian exiles since the Russian invasion.

Germany is sending a “strong message” to its own public as well as to its European partners, said Trauner.

The migratory pressure “remains significant” with more than 500,000 asylum applications registered in the European Union for the first six months of the year, he said.

‘Climate on impunity’

Germany, which received about a quarter of them alone, criticises the countries of southern Europe for allowing migrants to circulate without processing their asylum applications, but southern states denounce a lack of solidarity of the rest of Europe.

The moves by Germany were condemned by EU allies including Greece and Poland, but Scholz received the perhaps unwelcome accolade of praise from Hungarian right-wing Prime Minister Viktor Orban, Moscow’s closest friend in the European Union, when he declared “welcome to the club”.

The EU Commission’s failure to hold countries to account “only fosters a climate of impunity where unilateral migration policies and practices can proliferate,” said Adriana Tidona, Amnesty International’s Migration Researcher.

But behind the rhetoric, all European states are also aware of the crucial role played by migrants in keeping sectors going including transport and healthcare, as well as the importance of attracting skilled labour.

“Behind the symbolic speeches, European leaders, particularly German ones, remain pragmatic: border controls are targeted,” said Sophie Meiners, a migration researcher with the German Council on Foreign Relations.

Even Meloni’s government has allowed the entry into Italy of 452,000 foreign workers for the period 2023-2025.

“In parallel to this kind of new restrictive measures, they know they need to address skilled labour needs,” she said.