Refugees: Vienna Makes Headlines with Announcement

The ongoing courses are to be completed, but from 2026 no further courses will be advertised by the Vienna Social Fund (FSW). The background is a dispute with the Integration Fund located at the federal level.

Numerous German Course Places for Refugees Funded

The FSW funded around 1,700 German course places for refugees in 2024 alone, which amounted to a total of 1.9 million euros. Between 2017 and 2024, the courses would have cost around 20 million euros in total. Hacker believes that the Austrian Integration Fund (ÖIF), located at the federal level, is actually responsible for this, but does not offer enough German course places in Vienna. Therefore, the city of Vienna had to step in, according to the argument.

However, the ÖIF disputes this: Who receives a German course from the ÖIF is clearly regulated in the Integration Act, it was stated in a statement to the APA. Accordingly, the ÖIF provides German courses for asylum seekers and those entitled to subsidiary protection as well as Ukrainian displaced persons, asylum seekers are not covered by the Integration Act. "The FSW has therefore never compensated for the ÖIF, but funded German courses for a target group for which the ÖIF has no legal responsibility," emphasized the Integration Fund.

A new dimension has apparently been brought into the debate by the pressure to save due to the billion-euro deficit of the federal capital. The annual savings would be roughly the same as the expenditure for the German courses of recent years, as a spokeswoman told the "Standard". Hacker once again called on the ÖIF to "finally" fulfill its task and offer enough course places in Vienna. The demand far exceeds the supply, as recently 4,000 affected individuals received a letter from the ÖIF stating that they could not be accommodated in any German course, said Hacker.

The ÖIF also rejects this claim as "false". In fact, these are individuals who "were informed at the ÖIF advisory centers that they have already exhausted their funding opportunities at a specific language level because, for example, they dropped out of courses without excuse, were excluded for disciplinary reasons (misconduct), or did not take up assigned course places at all". These are now assigned to freely accessible online German courses on the ÖIF language portal and are offered a course place again from the next language level. This is also referred to by the MA40, responsible for minimum security in Vienna and subordinate to the city council, in their letters to minimum security recipients, according to the ÖIF, which further noted "that the use of tax funds is carried out in accordance with the principles of economy, efficiency, and expediency".

"Ping-Pong Between Federal and Vienna"

Criticism of the stop of the courses came from the Greens. This endangers integration in Vienna, criticized the party chairwoman of the Vienna Greens, Judith Pühringer: "You cannot demand integration from people if you take away the integration offer from them." "Hardly a day goes by without the SPÖ Vienna proving to us that it has lost its social and integration policy compass." The "constant ping-pong between the federal and Vienna" is also dishonest, after all, the SPÖ governs at the federal level as well.

(APA/Red)

This article has been automatically translated, read the original article here.