56% of Austrians want influx of refugees cut to zero: Survey

By Timo Kirez

GENEVA (AA) – About 56% of Austrians want the influx of refugees cut to zero, according to a survey published on Monday.

The survey by the Unique Research Institute on behalf of the Austrian daily Heute revealed that 36% of respondents said they were "completely" in favor of Austria not accepting any more refugees at all, while 20% of respondents stated they were "somewhat" in favor of a reduction to zero.

Only 37% were against a reduction to zero in the survey.

The background to the survey was the comments made by Georg Dornauer, head of the Social Democratic Party of Austria (SPO).

“You can even discuss with me whether the asylum cap should not be zero for the coming years in Austria,” the politician said last week in an interview with the Austrian daily Der Standard.

Dornauer was sharply criticized for his comments by the party chairman of the Austrian SPO, Andreas Babler.

During a press conference in Innsbruck on Saturday, Babler described Dornauer's statements as "politically moronic" and "completely unthinkable."

A new parliament will be elected in Austria this fall. According to the latest polls by various survey institutes, the anti-immigration Freedom Party of Austria (FPO) is clearly in the lead.

The topic of immigration dominates the discussion in the media ahead of the elections, even though the number of asylum applications in Austria is falling.

According to the statistics platform Statista, around 2,290 asylum applications were submitted in Austria by the end of January 2024. Extrapolated for the year as a whole, around 27,400 applications are expected.

This would mean that the number of asylum applications would fall for the second year in a row, dropping to the lowest level since 2020.