EDIT: Thanks for all your questions. We will start publishing answers shortly.
If you are a UK national who was living legally in Austria before 1 January 2021, you need to apply for a new residency card before the end of 2021. Although you have until 31st December to do so, you should consider applying at the earliest convenient opportunity to get it out of the way. In the meantime, your rights to live, work, study and access healthcare in Austria are protected by the Withdrawal Agreement.
If you are a UK national living in Austria, however long you have lived here, you need to apply for a new residence card before 31st Dec 2021.
Know any Brits who are not on social media? Please share the message with them.
It’s not Wurscht!🌭
More info: https://t.co/BAbKv70S58 pic.twitter.com/afIC5wXybM
— UK in Austria (@UKinAustria) March 10, 2021
Registration opened at the start of January. According to the latest figures from the Austrian government, by the end of February, more than a quarter of the 11,500 UK nationals in Austria had applied for the Article 50 card. This is a good start – especially in the context of covid lockdowns – but it means there are plenty of people who are yet to register.
One of our most important jobs in the coming months will be contacting British nationals in Austria who are harder to reach, for example people who are not online. If you know any British nationals who are offline or have not yet applied for a new residency card, please do mention it to them.
We appreciate the close cooperation with the Austrian government and the work of citizens groups including British in Austria, British in Europe and UK Citizens in Austria.
Here is a brief update on a couple of important topics:
Driving licences – deadline 30 June 2021
If you have lived in Austria since before 1 January 2021 and have not yet swapped your UK licence for an Austrian one, you have until 30 June to do so. This is because new rules from 1 January 2021 mean you have six months after arriving in Austria to do so. You can use your Austrian driving licence while visiting the UK.
Passports
If your British passport is expiring, this might be a good moment to renew it. You will need a valid passport when applying for the Article 50 residence card.
Buying property
We know that the right to buy property is a topic that is important to many of you. The regions have responsibility for property law in Austria and we are in the process of clarifying the situation with them. We will publish an update on our Living in Austria guide and embassy social media in due course.
Online Q&A 21 April
The team here at the embassy will be running a Q&A on Wednesday 21 April. We will publish a post on our facebook page where you can ask questions in the comments. The post will be open for comments for 2 hours from midday.
Please comment only on the original post and not on shares, because we cannot always see comments on shared posts. If you prefer not to use facebook, you can leave questions as comments on this blog post. We will publish the answers in the week starting 26th April. We will do our best to answer everything.