Universal Periodic Review

Continue its efforts in improving its legal and institutional frameworks for protection against discrimination, and to establish a systematic data collection mechanism to record incidents of racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance to ensure that all incidents are investigated, prosecuted and that the perpetrators were punished

Proponent:

Remarks to progress by Liga (last modified Dec 31, 2024):

Around 30,000 police officers throughout Austria were prepared for this task by completing e-learning seminars and receiving training as multipliers. The police now work on the basis of a victim-centred approach, actively listening to the victims and investigating consistently to ensure appropriate prosecution. These measures are designed to help tackle bias crime and improve safety for all citizens. With the systematic recording of hate crimes motivated by prejudice and the publication of statistics on hate crimes recorded by the police, a first important step has been taken to make hate crimes visible. It is important to observe the extent to which the views of the police and victim protection organisations or community organisations agree on whether an incident should be classified as a hate crime or not. These observations are an important basis for the reliability of the statistics now collected on hate crimes (Report of the Federal Ministry of the Interior on „Hate Crime“ in Austria 2021: https://www.bmi.gv.at/408/Projekt/files/218_2021_Hate_Crime_Bericht_2021_GESAMT_V20220510_barrierefrei.pdf).
In addition, relevant amendments to criminal legislation have been introduced to improve the handling of hate crimes. The amendments to the Criminal Code (StGB) and the Code of Criminal Procedure (StPO) contain new regulations to combat hate crime more effectively and to strengthen the rights of victims. It is important to regularly review and adapt these legal changes in order to meet current challenges. Austria has not yet implemented some of the recommendations of the European Commission against Racism and Intolerance (ECRI) from the 2015 report „General Policy Recommendations No. 15 on Combating Hate Speech“. These include, in particular, the pending ratification of the „Additional Protocol to the Convention on Cybercrime“ and „Protocol No. 12 to the Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms“.
ECRI also emphasises that politicians should take a clear stance against racist hate speech and that political parties should introduce codes of conduct that prohibit the use of hate speech. These recommendations have not yet been heeded.  Austria has still not implemented standardised and comprehensive legal protection against discrimination. Austrian equality law is still characterised by a discriminatory hierarchy of grounds for discrimination with large gaps in protection outside the world of work. When it comes to access to goods and services, federal law (which is applicable in the majority of all cases) only provides protection against discrimination on the basis of disability, ethnicity and gender – but not on the basis of age, religion and belief or sexual orientation, and therefore not in the case of multiple discrimination. Furthermore, there is no comprehensive protection against discrimination based on all grounds of discrimination in the area of education and there is no comprehensive protection against discrimination in a number of areas of social protection. There is no explicit legal protection against intersectional discrimination and discrimination based on gender identity, expression or characteristics. The anti-discrimination laws and the respective equality bodies at federal and state level are organised very differently, which makes access to justice more difficult. Those affected by discrimination usually have to take legal action individually. The amounts of damages awarded in practice are low and there is a lack of effective statutory minimum compensation and injunctive relief. A collective action as a collective legal protection instrument only exists in cases of discrimination on the basis of disability.    The current government programme 2025-2029 does not provide for the elimination of these inequalities in discrimination protection (see government programme 2025-2029 as a PDF on the website of the Federal Chancellery: https://www.bundeskanzleramt.gv.at/bundeskanzleramt/die-bundesregierung/regierungsdokumente.html available).