09/24/2023 07:00 (current 09/24/2023 07:00)
The number of asylum requests remains high. ©Canva (symbol image)
As of Saturday, the availability of August nursing home numbers has shown a fairly clear trend two-thirds of the way through the year.
Applications are decreasing, but remain at a high level. However, this is put into perspective by the fact that a large proportion of applicants travel directly to the actual destination countries. NEOS, however, criticizes the quality of the decisions.
6,958 asylum applications were submitted in August
About the numbers: In August, 6,958 asylum applications were submitted in Austria. This is the highest monthly figure this year, but at the same time it is also the biggest drop compared to a comparable month in 2022, namely 53 percent. Overall, the number of orders fell by 40% in the first eight months.
This brings us to 35,449 entries. To put this in perspective. This represents almost three times as many applications as in the entire pre-Corona year, 2019. The difference arises from the fact that in the last two years, many refugees actually only wanted to cross Austria and lodge an application when they were picked up, but then continued immediately after the departure of the actual target countries.
The number of asylum requests remains high
This can be seen by the number of procedures that reach neither a positive nor a negative conclusion. That’s a good 22,000 this year. This in turn puts into perspective the so-called per capita burden on EU states, where Austria is in second place behind Cyprus.
The largest groups of refugees this year continue to be Syrians, Afghans and Moroccans, although the latter have almost no chance of asylum. The Turks also now have a double-digit order percentage. 10,746 people were granted asylum in Austria in the first two-thirds of the year. Furthermore, there are a good 5,200 with subsidiary protection and almost 1,200 with valid reasons for their stay.
NEOS questions the quality of decisions
However, NEOS questions the quality of decisions in the first instance asylum procedure based on a response to a consultation by the Ministry of the Interior. There were more than 8 thousand cases in 2021 and more than 5 thousand in the previous year in which the second instance annulled or changed the first instance decision. In both years, around half of the corrections were for content-related reasons. According to the Ministry of the Interior, this includes careless investigations, formal errors and errors of interpretation.
However, the numbers alone do not allow any statement about the quality of the Federal Directorate of Immigration and Asylum’s procedures, according to the response to the consultation. To achieve better values, the Ministry of the Interior depends on continuous training. NEOS asylum spokesperson Stephanie Krisper, on the other hand, wonders why BFA’s management of training is failing so much. Much valuable time and much valuable tax money could be saved if fewer errors were made and had to be corrected by the second instance – “not to mention the fact that such decisions often involve life and limb.”
There is, however, positive development in basic services for refugees, who have long been heavily burdened by expelled Ukrainians. At the beginning of September there were about 79,600 people there, 55 percent of whom were Ukrainians. This figure is significantly below the almost 93 thousand at the beginning of the year.