“Austria is set to become a start-up magnet”, declared the Austrian Government when the Red-White-Red card for start-up founders was introduced in 2017. In recent years, immigration routes for start-ups and innovative entrepreneurs have been expanded both within the EU and globally. Austria and 11 other EU Member States offer special visas and residence permits to facilitate the immigration of start-up founders from non-EU countries. In light of demographic change and the needs of the labour market, the race to attract innovative talent is gathering pace. However, since the introduction of the Red-White-Red card for start-up founders, the residence permit has only been granted three times (as of September 2019). The challenges facing start-up founders from non-EU countries who wish to migrate to Austria are manifold – bureaucratic hurdles, complicated entry requirements and high costs – to name but a few.
To mark International Migrants’ Day on 18 December, the European Migration Network in Austria organized an interactive discussion entitled “Race for Innovative Talents” as part of the EU Migration Talks series. Together with representatives from government departments, experts and start-up founders, the event explored pathways for innovative entrepreneurs from non-EU countries to migrate to Austria and compared the situation with that in other EU Member States. We took a critical look at the start-up ecosystem for non-EU start-ups and discussed approaches to make Austria more attractive to international entrepreneurs.
The speakers were: Annamaria Andres (Austrian Research Promotion Agency); Christina Knahr (Federal Ministry for Digitalisation and Business Location); Rafael Rasinger Amivilia (Austrian Federal Economic Chamber); John Shen (Xencio); Alexander Spiegelfeld (International Organization for Migration); Tülay Tuncel (Vienna Business Agency).
