The federal interior ministry—generally responsible for determining whose asylum claims are legitimate—has outsourced this task to the approximately 100 NGOs involved in the program.
The Austrian interior ministry recorded 1,183 criminal offenses—including crimes like rape, sexual abuse of children, physical harm, murder, document forgery, fraud, and theft—that took place at asylum centers in 2022, a year-over-year increase of 57.5%.
With the migrant crisis set to worsen over the summer months, the new legislation promises tougher prison sentences for traffickers and the removal of legal aid provisions for asylum seekers.
Frontex refused to state which NGOs specifically had their details passed onto Europol, but did not rule out the possibility of the information being used in future prosecutions.
Le Monde reports that since the summer of 2022, an obscure group called the Nationalists Party has been running an anti-immigrant campaign on social media.
