The leader of the conservative Freedom Party of Austria (FPÖ) in Vienna, a party which for roughly a year now has consistently topped the country’s polls, has once again called for social welfare benefits such as minimum income to be linked to citizenship, citing newly released figures from Vienna’s integration report that revealed a third of the city’s inhabitants (34%) do not have an Austrian passport.
Commenting on the integration report released Tuesday, November 21st, Vienna’s FPÖ leader, Councilor Dominik Nepp, stated that the “numbers are a clear indication that we need to protect our social systems and provide incentives for real integration,” the Austrian news portal Exxpress reported.
Nepp argued that due to the policies of socialist SPÖ Mayor Michael Ludwig, vast swaths of immigrants with long-term residence in Vienna do not seek to obtain citizenship since they “can access the social system without an Austrian passport,” suggesting that such policies “undermine the meaning of [Austrian] citizenship” and inhibit the process of integration.
“We must only provide social benefits such as minimum income to those who are fully committed to our country and have Austrian citizenship. The further softening of the criteria for receiving social benefits or being granted the right to vote would devalue the efforts of those who strive for citizenship and take the associated duties seriously,” Vienna’s FPÖ chairman continued.
He also underscored the importance of preserving the right to vote as a fundamental privilege, saying that voting rights must be “reserved for those who feel connected to our homeland and have honestly earned citizenship through years of integration efforts.”