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AUSTRIAN CITIZENSHIP

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

The number of people receiving Austrian citizenship through naturalisation processes is slowing down. Here's a look at some stats about the new citizens and where they are from originally.

Published: 16 February 2024 16:55 CET
IN NUMBERS: Who are the new Austrian citizens in 2024?
Austrian citizenship usually requires a ten-year mandatory residence period - but there are ways to shorten that. Photo by Ante Hamersmit on Unsplash

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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AUSTRIAN CITIZENSHIP

EXPLAINED: What is the ‘2-year rule’ for new Austrian citizens?

If you're applying for Austrian citizenship, you may have heard of the 'two-year' rule that affects the period immediately after you become an Austrian national. But what does it mean?

Published: 15 February 2024 12:52 CET
Updated: 29 March 2024 11:23 CET
EXPLAINED: What is the '2-year rule' for new Austrian citizens?

Foreigners have the right to apply to become Austrian citizens if they meet certain conditions, but Austria is one of the strictest countries for naturalisation in Europe. 

The most common grounds for citizenship are through residency (after ten years of continuous residency in Austria, falling to six years if you meet specific integration requirements, such as being married to an Austrian citizen).

The application process itself is lengthy and requires putting together an extensive dossier of paperwork and, in general, undergoing interviews and taking an integration exam that tests your knowledge of Austrian history and culture (in German, of course).

Overall, few people naturalise every year – the numbers rose once Austria approved dual citizenship for Nazi victims and their decedents, but they are slowly falling again. In 2023, Austrian citizenship was granted to 19,939 persons (over 40 percent of them lived abroad, and most were from Israel), a 3.2 percent drop from the year before. 

READ ALSO: Five surprising Austrian citizenship rules you should know about

One of the main deterrents to naturalising Austrian is the fact that, in general, a person who takes on Austrian nationality through residence years will have to give up their original citizenship.

There are few exceptions to this rule, including for Nazi victims and their descendants, and in extraordinary cases with the authorisation of the Austrian government. In general, though, if you take on Austrian citizenship (rather than being entitled to it by blood), you need to give up your previous citizenship.

This is when the two-year rule comes in.

What is the two-year rule?

Foreign citizens naturalising Austrians need to show proof that they have given up any other nationalities in order to receive Austrian citizenship through naturalisation.

However, international treaties exist to prevent people from becoming stateless – meaning that you effectively cannot give up your citizenship and then receive Austrian nationality because that would mean you would have no citizenship in the meantime.

Because of that, Austria has a ‘two-year rule’ in place. 

People who are granted Austrian citizenship via a naturalisation process – and are not within the few exceptions that allow them to keep other citizenships – have two years to renounce any other nationalities. 

READ ALSO: When is dual citizenship allowed in Austria?

After that period, they need to show official confirmation to the Austrian government that they have given up their other nationalities. Only then will the Austrian citizenship be confirmed. 

If the person fails to show proof of the renunciation, the Austrian government can revoke Austrian citizenship. In fact, this is one of the only six cases when Austrian citizenship can be revoked. 

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