By Rainer Bauböck (EUDO CITIZENSHIP co-director)

On 4 July 2013, the First Chamber of the Austrian Parliament (Nationalrat) adopted a minor reform of the citizenship with the votes of social democratic and conservative MPs. These two parties (SPÖ and ÖVP) currently form a coalition government.

The amendment had become necessary in order to comply with judgments by the European Court of Human Rights and the Austrian Constitutional Court concerning non-discrimination of children born out of wedlock and a pending case before the Austrian Constitutional Court concerning the exclusion from citizenship of handicapped persons who were unable to meet the regular income requirement. 

During the preparation of the amendment the Junior Minister (Staatssekretär) for Immigrant Integration, Sebastian Kurz (ÖVP) proposed to reintroduce a facilitated naturalisation procedure for especially well-integrated immigrants after 6 years of residence, which in a less regulated form had already existed between 1999 and 2006.

Opposition parties proposed several additional amendments that were voted down by the government parties. The Green Party suggested inter alia to introduce ius soli, the toleration of dual citizenship in naturalisations and to give retroactive effect to equal treatment of children of Austrian citizen fathers born out of wedlock. The right wing Freedom Party proposed to introduce acquisition of Austrian citizenship by declaration and with toleration of dual citizenship for the descendants of residents of the province of South Tyrol in the year 1920. (The province had been lost to Italy as a result of the St. German Peace Treaty after World War I.)

The main points of the reform are:

• Children born out of wedlock to an Austrian citizen father and a foreign national mother will acquire Austrian citizenship by descent if the father recognizes the child or if a court determines paternity within 8 weeks after birth.

• Exemptions to the requirement of stable income as a condition for naturalisation will be made in case of permanent serious health problems that make it impossible to achieve the required monthly income.

• The condition that stable income without receipt of welfare payment must be documented for the last 3 years before naturalisation is changed to 36 months out of the last 6 years, with at least six months immediately before naturalisation.

• Applicants can be naturalised after 6 years of continuous residence (instead of ten years for ordinary naturalisation) if they can either document German language skills at level B2 of the European Common Reference Framework (B1 is required for ordinary naturalisations) or have been for at least three years active in a voluntary association that contributes to the common good, have held a function in an official interest corporation, or have been working in a social, health or educational profession. Applicants have to provide reasons why their relevant activities have an “added value” for their integration in Austria.

• A citizenship ceremony is introduced for which the law prescribes the singing of the national anthem and the presence of the flags of the Austrian Republic, the province and the European Union.

• Persons who had been treated erroneously as Austrian citizens (presumptive citizens) for at least 15 years can obtain citizenship by declaration within 6 months after learning about their status.

• Applicants for naturalisation will no longer be rejected if they have lost their citizenship of origin due to renunciation but no longer fulfil the income requirement at the time of naturalisation. In the past, the requirement of renunciation of a citizenship of origin prior to naturalisation in Austria had resulted in statelessness if the candidate no longer had the required income. Apart from the income requirement, all other conditions for naturalisation must still be met at the time of decision about the application, which may still result in statelessness.

The amendment is due to come into effect already on 1 August 2013.

Read the full text of the amendment (in German).

Read more in the Austrian dailies Der Standard () and Wiener Zeitung.