Last year the number of violent crimes increased dramatically compared to 2021, with 78,836 cases registered, which is the highest number in the last ten years. In addition, 139,000 crimes against property were recorded by the authorities in 2022.

Austrian Interior Minister Gerhard Karner recently presented the federal government’s security policy performance for last year. Nearly 489,000 crimes were officially reported, but the statistics do not show the total number of convictions for the various offences.

For example, the number of violent crimes has skyrocketed compared to 2021, with the 78,836 cases reported last year being the highest number in the last ten years. In addition, 139,000 crimes against property were recorded by the authorities in 2022.

The Interior Ministry’s report is in fact an assessment of the federal government’s failure in the area of security policy, the right-wing Austrian Freedom Party (FPO) says. FPO MP Hannes Amesbauer recalled that IM Karner had refused to answer questions about police and crime statistics for months, and had repeatedly evaded parliamentary questions.

„It is a democratic scandal that the OVP’s interior minister has been refusing to provide information on police crime statistics with outrageous excuses for months. Clearly they did not want the explosion of the 19 per cent hike in reported crime to be made public too soon,”

the FPO politician said, adding that the Interior Ministry’s presentation systematically avoided information that would have shed light on the proportion of crimes committed by foreign nationals.

„They completely ignored the fact that certain groups of foreigners had a particularly negative impact on crime statistics in the past, as Austria has become a real magnet for immigration, thanks to the government’s PR on refugees,”

the MP pointed out. With around 110,000 asylum applications last year alone, which far surpassed the disastrous year of 2015, illegal mass immigration will continue unabated in Austria this year as well, FPO leader Herbert Kickl warned.

„The responsibility for this lies with the OVP’s Federal Chancellor Karl Nehammer and Interior Minister Gerhard Karner. Their inaction and pretence of a supposedly restrictive refugee policy is now on the brink of betraying of our country and its people,”

Mr Kickl stressed, adding that more than 6,700 applications had been submitted in January and February this year alone. It can be assumed that these asylum applications were almost exclusively from newly arrived illegal immigrants. Mr Kickl compared today’s figures with those of 2018, under his term as interior minister, when 13,746 asylum applications were registered in the whole year. The FPO chair therefore called on Chancellor Nehammer and Interior Minister Karner to retake the reins of power, because those had long since fallen out of their hands. The FPO has also put forward a 23-point package of measures which, in their view, would stop mass illegal migration and its effects.

“If the Austrian government still refuses to stop the influx of refugees, it must resign immediately” so that new elections can form a government that can do the job, Mr Kickl said.