Naturalizations in Austria Up 21.1% Year on Year in the First Three Quarters of 2021
In the first nine months of 2021, Austrian citizenship was granted to 7,676 persons, including 1,131 persons residing abroad. With 368 naturalizations, the United States ranks fourth. Find out which other countries the new citizens come from.
About 39.0 percent of the new Austrians were citizens of Turkey, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia, Israel, the United States or Kosovo before the naturalization. / Picture: © BMI Bundesministerium für Inneres / Alexander Tuma
According to Statistics Austria, during the first nine months of 2021, there were 21.1% more naturalizations than from January to September 2020 (6,336 naturalizations), but only 0.9% more than during the comparable period before the COVID-19 pandemic began, the first three quarters of 2019 (7,610 naturalizations).
About one-third of those naturalized in the first three quarters of 2021 were already born in Austria (2,334 or 30.4%), and more than half were women (52.3%).
The share of children under the age of 18 was 31.7%.
Two-fifths (2,995 persons or 39.0%) of the new Austrians were citizens of one of the following six countries before naturalization:
- Turkey (718 or 9.4%),
- Bosnia and Herzegovina (617),
- Serbia (538),
- Israel (389),
- United States (368), and
- Kosovo (365).
In almost all federal provinces, more persons were naturalized from January to September 2021 than in the same period of the previous year; only in Styria were there fewer.
Compared with the first nine months of 2019, however, there were more naturalizations in only four provinces (Carinthia, Burgenland, Tyrol and Salzburg), while there were fewer in five provinces.
Compared with before the COVID-19 pandemic, the decline in naturalizations was particularly sharp in Vienna (-26.8% from 2019 to 2021), although here there was a 3.0% increase between the first three quarters of 2020 and 2021.
Styria showed the second largest decrease, -21.5%, when comparing the first three quarters of 2019 and 2021, with 9.7% fewer naturalizations also occurring here when comparing January to September 2020.
More than two-thirds of all naturalizations in the first three quarters of 2021 took place on the basis of a legal entitlement (5,287 persons or 68.9%).
Among them, 3,090 persons were naturalized after at least six years of residence in Austria and for reasons worthy of special consideration, e.g.
- proven German language skills and sustainable integration,
- birth in Austria,
- EEA citizenship or
- eligible for asylum - §11a, para. 4, para. 6 as well as para. 7),
- 1,159 politically persecuted persons and their descendants (§58c, para. 1 (21 persons), §58c, paras. 1a and 1b (1,138 persons),
- 434 persons on the basis of marriage to an Austrian (§11a, para. 1 and para. 2) and
- 330 persons on the basis of residence in Austria for at least 15 years and sustained integration (§12, para. 1, line 1).
A further 595 persons were granted citizenship on a discretionary basis (7.8%), including 562 persons after at least ten years of residence (§10, para. 1).
Under the heading of extension of conferral, a total of 1,794 persons or 23.4% were naturalized, including 222 spouses (§16) and 1,572 children (§17).