Patience ran out on the other side of the border: Burgenland declared war on the government

Burgenland would be the first of the nine Austrian provinces to set the upper limit for accepting refugees, the head of the province neighboring Hungary, Social Democrat Hans-Peter Doskozil, said in an interview. Speaking to the Heute news portal, the number one leader of the province for many years emphasized that Burgenland would be willing to accept a maximum of 340 refugees instead of the 800 so far, and indicated that even with this number, Burgenland would be in third place among the provinces. The provincial leader indicated that they would terminate the agreement with the federal government on the care of refugees.

At the same time as Doskozil’s announcement, the Ministry of the Interior published the first quarter data on asylum applications. According to this, 6,922 applications were submitted from January to the end of March. This is 32 percent lower than the same data for the same period last year. In March, the number of submitted applications decreased by 24 percent compared to last March. It was also clear from the government data that

out of 6,922 applications, 3,649 were applications related to the admission of minor refugees.

This accounted for 53 percent of the submitted applications. At the same time, the consequences of intensified family reunification efforts are also appearing. This is indicated by the fact that children under the age of seven were the largest group of asylum seekers. Furthermore, while the number of applications submitted by women amounted to only 24 percent in 2023, in the first three months of this year this proportion was already 46 percent.

Of the 6,922 applications, 4,335 were submitted by refugees with Syrian citizenship, which is by far the largest group.

At the same time, according to data from the Ministry of the Interior, the number of deportations increased.

While there were 3,149 deportations in the first quarter of this year, there were 2,913 in the same period last year.

Of the 3,149, 1,722 were committed by force.

The ministry also points out that human traffickers now prefer to avoid Austria, the trend that started last October has continued: another reason for the number of people fleeing through Austria with the help of human traffickers is that the amount demanded by human traffickers has almost doubled in recent months. According to the ministry, the “per person” price of human trafficking originating in Bulgaria or Turkey is 3,000-5,000 euros.