Author:
Julia Schmidbaur
from Wieden
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The planned nationalization of the care and legal advice for asylum seekers appears to have been put off for the time being.
AUSTRIA. Isn’t there a nationalization of the care and legal advice for asylum seekers? As the “press” reported on Friday, transitional justice minister Clemens Jabloner has not yet terminated the contracts with the NGOs.
Already in May the National Council had decided to transfer responsibility to the Federal Agency for Care and Support Services (BBU) with the votes of the ÖVP and FPÖ shortly before the “Ibiza Affair”. Criticism came from the opposition: there were fears that the NGOs would be eliminated and that refugee rights would be restricted. ÖVP and FPÖ described the controversial decision as a measure against the “asylum industry”.
The contracts should have been terminated now so that the BBU can take over from 2020. The Ministry of Justice and NGOs agreed on a shorter notice period for the contracts to ten months. It will therefore be up to the new government to decide in February whether to terminate the contracts in the long term. In this way, one would not have to rewrite everything if the future coalition did not want to continue the plans of the previous ones, it said on Friday.
Criticism of new regulation
Critics of the new regulation fear that refugee rights will deteriorate: the Interior Ministry would have the say in the BBU, just as in the Federal Office for Foreign Affairs and Asylum, which decides on asylum applications. According to the critics, one would decide in the same house about the protection status of people and at the same time advise them on complaints against the decision.
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