Proposal to introduce compulsory attendance for asylum seekers

Policy Response DateApril 21, 2010 Country: Austria Address: Vienna General Type: Discrimination, Institutional discrimination Racism and discrimination phenomena: Anti-migrant/xenophobia
Groups affected / Interested in: Refugees, Asylum seekers Key socio-economic/institutional areas: Policing - law enforcement

Proposal to introduce compulsory attendance for asylum seekers and heated debate about the need of a new reception facility in Eberau.
Only a short while after further restrictions for asylum seekers had entered into force on January 1st, 2010, the Minister of the Interior (MoI) presented her plan to introduce compulsory attendance for asylum seekers in the reception facilities during the admissibility procedure for up to four weeks (including enforcement through the use of force and pecuniary fines of up to EUR 5,000.00 or surrogate custodial sentence). After harsh criticism raised by legal experts, UNHCR and asylum NGOs, the current draft law contains compulsory attendance of up to seven days during the first phase and of several weeks during the second phase (‘alleviated compulsory attendance’). These developments were accompanied by heated debates by politicians and in the media about the need of a new reception facility in Eberau. In those discussions, asylum seekers were often mentioned in the context of criminality. UNHCR called for more objectivity when dealing with asylum issues; the polemic with regard to Eberau was “not compatible with the asylum tradition of Austria”.

Sources:

UNHCR, UNHCR lehnt neue Asylvorschläge ab, 2010-01-27, available at: http://dev.unhcr.de/index.php?id=447&L=whobcnykttwycgiy&expand=2272&cHash=f5d09a71073686e2a039648ad0699576

UNHCR, Eberau-Polemik unvereinbar mit der Asyltradition Österreichs, 2010-01-05, available at: http://www.unhcr.at/print/archiv/pressemitteilungen/artikel/8519b06c9c69a2a94ba4ac066fe6263b/eberau-polemik-unvereinbar-mit-der-asyltradition-oesterreichs.html