Despite austerity budget

Police take on 2500 new officers this year

The police have to save on overtime.

(Bild: P. Huber)

Cost-cutting plans for the police have recently caused a stir. Interior Minister Gerhard Karner emphasizes that there will be no cuts in security despite the austerity budget. On the contrary: 2500 new officers will be recruited this year.

Due to constitutional requirements, all ministries currently have an automatic provisional budget (transitional budget). Negotiations for a double budget for 2025/2026 with the Ministry of Finance are currently underway. However, this will not be ready until April. Until then, the departments are only allowed to spend the same amount as in the previous year. This is why the Vienna police have ordered restrictions on overtime.

32,619 officers are on law enforcement duty
The Ministry emphasizes that this does not mean that cuts are being made to the police force in general. As of February 1, the Ministry of the Interior, including the provincial police directorates, the Directorate of State Security and Intelligence Service and the Federal Office for Immigration and Asylum, had 40,393 employees, 32,619 of whom were on law enforcement duty. In the last two years, 4410 police officers have been accepted into basic training - a record figure. Around 2,500 police recruits are planned for 2025; almost 400 recruits were already accepted in March.

Three quarters of the expenditure is for personnel
In 2024, the Ministry of the Interior had a budget of 4.6 billion euros, which corresponds to around 3.3 percent of the federal government's general budget - plus the budget for immigration amounting to around 800 million euros. Three of the four billion are personnel costs for a total of 40,000 employees, including around 32,000 uniformed police officers. One billion is material expenditure. Material expenses mainly include rents for around 1,200 offices at around 850 locations throughout Austria, vehicles (6,800), equipment and uniforms, IT licenses, but also operating resources, ammunition, business trips, office supplies, subsidies and special projects.

Austerity pact is still being drawn up
The government's rough austerity plan stipulates that all ministries must save 15 percent of their material expenditure (a total of 1.1 billion). However, Chancellor Christian Stocker has recently said that the distribution can be weighted differently and that some ministries will have to save more than others.

Karner and Stocker promise that "no savings will be made on security".

(Bild: APA/HANS KLAUS TECHT)

Last year, the police worked 5.7 million hours of overtime. This is often unpreventable, as many events occur with little or no lead time. For example, demonstrations only have to be reported 48 hours before they take place.