Austria’s incoming government has announced a stop to all family reunification procedures for asylum seekers effective immediately. The country’s new chancellor Christian Stocker, who took office on March 3, announced that the governing parties had agreed on an immediate stop to the practice of allowing refugees who have received asylum in Austria to have family members flown in directly from their home countries. “Immediate means now”, Stocker added.
However, it is currently unclear how long the halt will endure. While the right to family reunification is encoded in EU law Stocker said that member states could “transitorily” suspend reunifications if it was overburdened by the number of immigrants. “The goal of the transitory suspension is to integrate those that are already here”, Stocker wrote on X.
On March 4, Austria’s interior minister Gerhard Karner announced that he would formally inform EU Commissioner Magnus Brunner – Austria’s former finance minister now in charge of Home Affairs in Brussels – of Austria’s intentions during the council session of interior ministers on March 5 and hand over a letter from the Austrian government to the European Commission. More detailed regulations were currently being worked on according to the minister. “We have announced that we would introduce quotas for family reunification”, Karner said, continuing: “The first quota is zero”.
In 2023 and 2024 around 18,000 people came to Austria (9 million inhabitants) through family reunification. Most of the new immigrants came from Syria for which reunification procedures had already been “de facto halted” previously, according to the Interior Ministry.
Right-wing politicians have been critical of family reunification for a long time. In March 2024, Dominik Nepp, leader of the Freedom Party (FPÖ) in Vienna, alleged that the option was liable for abuse as it was “completely impossible to control” who was being let into the country.
Freedom Party leader Herbert Kickl whose party has been demanding a tougher stance on migration for a long time reacted critically to Stocker’s announcements. Referring to Stocker’s remarks on suspending reunifications because of overburdening, Kickl wrote: “An immediate halt to family reunification definitely sounds differently”. The system had been overburdened for a long time, Kickl continued and accused Stocker of looking for a way out of his own promise.
Austria’s announcement to halt family reunification has also been noticed in Germany. It is largely feared that the measure would increase immigration pressure on Germany if Austria became less attractive as a target country. “The result will be that these people come to Germany and get their family here”, conservative commentator Marcus Pretzell wrote on X, continuing: “Until someone stops it”.
