A small portion of asylum withdrawal decisions leads to actual deportations in Austria
Austria has revealed official figures related to asylum withdrawal procedures between 2020 and 2024, indicating that tens of thousands of cases have been re-evaluated, but only a small portion ended with the loss of actual protection, leaving many questions about the implementation.
According to the Austrian Ministry of the Interior, 23,752 procedures for withdrawing asylum were opened during this period, but only 5,035 cases ended with the withdrawal of protection status, which is less than one-fifth of the cases that began their procedures. On average, about 1,000 people lose their protection status annually.
The annual distribution shows that there were 1,341 cases in 2020, 1,306 cases in 2021, 951 cases in 2022, 588 cases in 2023, and 849 cases in 2024. The ministry did not clarify the significant difference between open procedures and final decisions, and it is likely that some files were closed without withdrawal or are still under processing.
The most sensitive point is what happens after the withdrawal of asylum. FPÖ MP Harald Schuh raised questions about the number of people who have been deported, who is still in Austria, and cases related to fraud in social assistance, and the ministry's response was brief: no additional statistics are kept, making the actual impact of the decisions unclear.
The situation is particularly sensitive for Syrians, as there were more than 8,900 open asylum withdrawal procedures until January 2026 after the fall of Bashar al-Assad's regime. With the ruling of the Austrian Constitutional Court VfGH in December 2025 regarding family reunification, and the government's decision to temporarily suspend family reunification until September 2026, thousands of cases remain pending, raising concerns about delays in implementation and the possibility of a new wave of family reunification requests.