Austria to stop refugee family reunification in EU first: govt

TDT | Manama

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Austria announced on Wednesday that it would pause family reunifications for those with asylum status from May, becoming the first in the European Union to do so.

Several EU countries are mulling stopping or tightening the right for people, who cannot safely return to their home countries, to bring their families, but so far no bloc member has a complete halt in place.

Austria has already halted family reunification for Syrians since the ouster of Syria's leader Bashar al-Assad last December, arguing it has to reassess the situation and threatening their deportation.

Syrians make up the bulk of family reunifications, but a newly formed conservative-led government -- under pressure with anti-immigration sentiment high -- has insisted that it needs to stop all.

Integration Minister Claudia Plakolm said the government would make a legal change to allow the interior ministry to issue a decree to halt family reunification.

"By May, so in just a few weeks, the stop is expected to become reality," Plakolm of the conservative People's Party (OeVP) told reporters.

"On one hand, our systems have reached their limits and, on the other hand, the probability of successful integration decreases massively with each new arrival," she added.

The pause is for six months but can be extended until May 2027, she said, adding it was a "mammoth task" to integrate those who have arrived, many of whom struggle to learn German and find jobs.

In 2023, almost 9,300 people arrived due to family reunification; last year it was almost 7,800 people, according to government figures.

Most of them were school-aged minors, placing a burden on schools, the government said.

Rights organisations have criticised the government's plans in the country of nine million, with one of the main asylum support groups saying they would challenge the decree once issued in court.

"There must be an emergency (to allow the government to pause family reunification), which in Austria is not the case," Asylkoordination Oesterreich spokesman Lukas Gahleitner told AFP.

The anti-immigration far-right Freedom Party (FPOe) topped parliamentary elections for the first time ever last November, gaining almost a third of the votes.

It failed to form government, with the election runner-up long-ruling OeVP cobbling together a coalition with the Social Democrats (SPOe) and the liberal NEOs.