CITIZENSHIP LAW AND INTEGRATION

YouTube premiere "From Kreisky's living room"

Robert Misik in conversation with MANFRED MATZKA, GERD VALCHARS AND NURTEN YILMAZ
CITIZENSHIP LAW AND INTEGRATION

The world is constantly changing, new problems arise for which new solutions are needed - and these need to be debated objectively and sensibly. For example, the issue of access to Austrian citizenship. Around 1.5 million foreign citizens live in Austria, more than 16 per cent of the resident population. This is partly a problem of justice, because access to citizenship is easier for the rich and more difficult for the poor, but it is also a problem of democracy. We have a two-tier society, divided into those who have a say and those who only have a say. Today, more than a quarter of a billion people worldwide live as „foreigners“ without citizenship in the country in which they have their centre of life.

Only seven out of every 1000 foreigners are naturalised each year, making Austria the red lantern among modern democracies; even restrictive Switzerland manages more than twice as many.

580,000 Austrians live abroad and therefore have the same problem of having only minimal democratic rights of co-determination in the countries in which they live. The high legal and bureaucratic hurdles to accessing citizenship must be reduced, but dual citizenship must also not remain a taboo if we do not want to allow a two-tier democracy.

Manfred Matzka, Former President of the Federal Chancellery.
Gerd Valchars, Political scientist, University of Vienna
Nurten Yilmaz, Member of the National Council, Spokesperson for Integration in the SPÖ parliamentary group

Moderation Robert Misik, Author and journalist