Payment card

Upper Austria to be made as unattractive as possible

The payment card for asylum seekers is coming to Upper Austria.(Bild: Dostal Harald)

End of the "social hammock and money shower": Lower Austria wants to keep asylum seekers away with the payment card. Will the new system also become mere harassment in Upper Austria? In July, the card is supposed to stop asylum abuse, but there are also opponents who don't think much of it.

The black-blue government in Upper Austria is already celebrating it as a successful model against asylum abuse before the start of the trial run in July, while their colleagues of the same color in Lower Austria have been testing it since the beginning of June: the two federal states are considered pioneers for a benefits-in-kind card instead of daily cash payments for asylum seekers.

Criticism before the launch
However, the start of the model has been somewhat bumpy. On the one hand, the head of Caritas, an important operator of asylum accommodation, recently questioned the usefulness of the card in the "Krone" newspaper and warned against the stigmatization of refugees. On the other hand, a recent ORF local inspection in Lower Austria showed that it is not possible to pay with the card in pharmacies, social markets, buses and restaurants.

Preventing bank transfers
The blunt justification of the ÖVP and FPÖ in the neighboring federal state: They want to make Lower Austria as unattractive as possible for asylum seekers. "The days of a social hammock and a shower of money for asylum seekers are over," says Lower Austria's state vice-president Udo Landbauer (FPÖ).

For the integration spokesperson for the Greens in the Upper Austrian state parliament, Ines Vukaj. For Ines Vukajlović, spokesperson for the Greens in the Upper Austrian state parliament, "this confirms all fears": advocates of the payment card in Upper Austria are not primarily concerned with preventing asylum seekers from transferring cash abroad, but rather with "making it more difficult for them to come and stay in Upper Austria".

Vukajlović wants to "crash the payment card party" with an oral question to Integration Minister Wolfgang Hattmannsdorfer (ÖVP) in the state parliament on Thursday. She questions the costs of introducing and implementing the card as well as the amounts that asylum seekers actually transfer abroad.