STOISITS: ADMINISTRATIVE MISTAKES CAUSE MAJOR DELAYS DURING CITIZENSHIP PROCEDURE

More and more complaints about the duration of citizenship procedures reach the Ombudsman Board: At the end of 2010 a Somali applied for Austrian citizenship. After a year he still hadn’t received a decision concerning his application. Also a man from Georgia was confronted with a similar problem. Both turned to the Ombudsman Board. The responsible Ombudswoman initiated an examination and asked the Vienna provincial government for statements.

The examination showed that the complaints had been entitled: In both cases, the authorities had failed to continue the procedure after the applications had been filed by the involved parties. For certain periods of time even complete procedural cessations had taken place. In both cases, the investigations necessary for the applications had to be renewed with the security directorate. The reason: the authorities had missed the fact that the Federal Asylum Office had registered exclusively the aliases of the complainants. This fact had caused even more avoidable delays.