9.04.2021 13:20
(Akt. 9.04.2021 13:20)
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48 students refused to leave the university and were forcibly carried out of the building.
© WHAT / GEORG HOCHMUTH
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In mid-December 2019, after a rally in front of the Vienna University of Technology, a group of students occupied the ballroom of the university. After about six and a half hours, the occupation was disbanded by the police, which, according to the VfGH, was illegal.
It was just a meeting, as the “Standard” reports. The students who had previously met under the motto “We’ve had enough!” had come together before the university, called, among other things, a higher budget for universities and an end for access restrictions and tuition fees.
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They only wanted to leave the ballroom after they had been able to present their demands to government negotiators. After the government negotiators did not come, the students announced that they would spend the night in the ballroom. The rectorate then had the university evacuated by the police.
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According to the VfGH, the TU occupation was just an assembly
48 students refused to leave the university and were therefore forcibly carried out of the building. A participating activist from the Association of Socialist Students (VSStÖ) then lodged a complaint with the Vienna Administrative Court. Your argument: The meeting was not an occupation in the sense of the Security Police Act (Paragraph 37), but an assembly, and the ordinance including eviction under the Security Police Act would therefore have been inadmissible. After the judge at the administrative court shared the student’s concerns, the case was submitted to the Constitutional Court for clarification.
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This has now decided that the police action was illegal. The action was actually not to be classified as an “occupation”. If a gathering is organized “with the intention of getting those present to work together (debate, discussion, etc.) so that there is a certain association among those who have come together”, it is rather an gathering. Both the objective (better study conditions) and the forms of action (raising banners, chanting slogans) had shown that the TU protests were a gathering. The refusal to leave the university hall could be “a specific form of expression” and an “underlining” of the meeting. Now the administrative court still has to make a decision.
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