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AUSTRIAN CITIZENSHIP

Have your say: Are you eligible to become Austrian but choose not to?

Becoming Austrian comes with many advantages, but very few people naturalise every year. Why is that? We want to hear from you.

Published: 11 January 2023 16:52 CET

Have your say: Are you eligible to become Austrian but choose not to?

Austrian citizenship usually requires a ten-year mandatory residence period - but there are ways to shorten that. Photo by Ante Hamersmit on Unsplash

Austria has one of the strictest naturalisation laws in Europe, and it requires many people have a permanent residence here for at least 10 years before they are allowed to apply for citizenship.

Becoming a citizen of Austria comes with many benefits. You no longer have to worry about MA35 appointments for visa renewals (also the case if you are a permanent resident), you are allowed to vote on all elections, you become an EU citizen (in case you weren’t before), and you can apply for certain jobs, such as with the police force, for example.

However, there are also downsides which may put people off. We want to hear from those who can but choose not to become Austrian. Please take a moment to fill in the survey.

Member comments

Anonymous - 16 January 2023 at 08:30 CET

Thanks, but no thanks. The resident’s card will have to do.

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IN NUMBERS: Who are the new Austrian citizens in 2024?

In 2023, Austrian citizenship was granted to 19,939 people, including more than 8,000 living abroad, according to Statistik Austria. The number was 3.2 percent lower in total than last year.

“The trend of rising naturalisation figures did not continue in 2023. The decline is mainly due to the fact that naturalisations of victims of National Socialism and their descendants fell by 17.7 percent”, said Tobias Thomas, Director General of Statistics Austria.

Austria’s naturalisation rate (ratio of naturalisations to the number of non-Austrian citizens living in Austria) is relatively low compared to the rest of Europe and continues at 0.7 percent. This is because the naturalisation process is not easy in the country – people generally need to be residents for ten years, pay high fees (around €2,000) and give up any other citizenship they hold.

READ ALSO: Will my children get an Austrian passport if born in Austria?

The hurdles are rarely worth it for EU citizens who can live and work in Austria. This is shown in the Statistik Austria data.

Who are the new Austrian citizens?

Only 9 percent of the naturalisations were from people from EU states. The highest proportion of new Austrians held Israeli citizenship (21.4 percent). They are followed by people from Syria (9.4 percent) and the United States (8.2 percent).

Other nationalities include Turkey (5.7 percent), United Kingdom (5.6 percent), Bosnia and Herzegovina (4 percent), and Afghanistan (4 percent). Nine percent of the naturalisations were of people from EU states and 4.4 percent of people from African countries.

The majority of the people naturalising as Austrians that were from the United Kingdom, the United States or Israel resided abroad – most of them were naturalised via the new process for restitution of Austrian citizenship to victims of the Nazi regime and their descendants. In these cases, people are allowed to keep their other citizenship.

READ ALSO: Austria improves nationality law for descendants of Nazi victims

About half of the people naturalising (50.2 percent) were women, and a third were under 18 years old.

In seven federal provinces, more people were naturalised in the year 2023 than the previous year. The relative increases were highest in Burgenland (44.9 percent to 297 naturalisations), followed by Styria (43.8 percent to 1,309), Upper Austria (36.1 percent to 1,808), Lower Austria (33.4 percent to 2,031), Tyrol (18.6 percent to 913), Salzburg (8.8 percent to 530) and Vorarlberg (4.6 percent to 677).

Fewer naturalisations compared to the year 2022 were reported in Carinthia (−21.4 percent to 434) and Vienna (−12.9 percent to 3,899).

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