Criminal Records in Austria: The Strafregister and Your Rights

Anyone dealing with Austrian bureaucracy for long enough eventually runs into the Strafregister, the national criminal record register. A prospective employer may ask for proof of a clean record. A visa office may want the same. A volunteering organisation working with children will require a special version of it before letting an applicant near a youth programme.

This hub explains how the Austrian criminal records system fits together: what the Strafregister actually is, who is responsible for it, what rights a person has over their own entry, and how convictions eventually stop being disclosed at all.

The detailed, practical side of this topic, how to apply for the certificate itself, the current fees, the exact Tilgungsfristen table, and the special certificate for roles involving minors, lives on its own page. This hub gives the overview and the legal footing; the certificate of conduct guide gives the step-by-step detail.

Information last verified on 22 July 2026. This page provides general legal information about Austrian law and does not constitute legal advice in an individual case.

What the Strafregister is, and who is responsible for it

The Strafregister exists for one stated purpose: to keep a nationwide record of criminal convictions, described in the statute as Evidenthaltung strafgerichtlicher Verurteilungen. It is kept for the entire federal territory rather than separately by each of Austria's nine states, so a conviction handed down by a court in Salzburg and one handed down in Vienna both end up in the same national register.

Responsibility for the register is split in a way that is easy to get wrong. Under § 1 Abs 2 Strafregistergesetz (SRG), the Landespolizeidirektion Wien, the Vienna state police directorate, is named as the Verantwortliche, the data controller, in the sense used by Article 4(7) and Article 24 of the EU General Data Protection Regulation. Under § 1 Abs 3 SRG, the Bundesminister für Inneres, the Federal Minister of the Interior, carries out the role of Auftragsverarbeiter, the data processor, under Article 4(8) and Article 28 of the same regulation.

In practice this means the register operates within the Ministry of the Interior's remit, but the specific legal controller named in the statute is a single police directorate rather than the ministry itself. A page that simply says the Ministry of the Interior runs the register is broadly right about where it sits, but glosses over that formal split.

That structure matters for a practical reason. It is the GDPR controller and processor framework, not a separate criminal-procedure rule, that underlies the data protection obligations around how a conviction is stored, who may access it, and when it must eventually be deleted.

Two different things: the register and the certificate

It helps to keep two documents apart, since they are often confused. The Strafregister is the government's own database, and nobody outside the authorities that administer it can browse it directly, not even the person it concerns.

What a person, an employer, or a foreign authority actually receives is the Strafregisterbescheinigung, a certificate issued on request. It reports the convictions the register holds for the named applicant, filtered through several rules: it excludes categories of data that are not meant for citizen-facing disclosure, and it never shows a conviction that has already reached its Tilgungsfrist. So the certificate is not a printout of the register. It is a purpose-built extract, produced only when someone applies for it, and only in the applicant's own name.

The Strafregisterbescheinigung, in brief

Three routes exist to apply for the ordinary certificate: at a Gemeinde (the Bürgermeister or Magistrat) in any area where the local Landespolizeidirektion is not itself the responsible Sicherheitsbehörde, at a Landespolizeidirektion directly, or at an Austrian embassy or consulate for applicants outside the country. It can also be requested online through oesterreich.gv.at using ID Austria or, for holders of another EU country's electronic identity, EU Login.

The fee structure changed on 1 January 2026. A single flat Pauschalgebühr now replaces the older system of several separate charges, and applying electronically costs less than applying on paper. A separate, harder-to-obtain certificate exists for roles that mainly involve supervising, caring for, or teaching minors, and it cannot be requested online because an employer or organisation must attach a written confirmation to the application.

This hub deliberately does not reproduce the fee table or the full application walkthrough. The certificate of conduct guide covers the current euro figures for each route, a worked cost example, and the separate procedure for the special certificate for work with children in full.

The Tilgungsgesetz: why a criminal record is not permanent

Austrian law does not treat a conviction as a lifelong mark. The Tilgungsgesetz 1972 sets out a system where, after a defined period, a conviction reaches Tilgung and can no longer appear in any Strafregisterauskunft or Strafregisterbescheinigung. Once that happens, the person is treated in law as gerichtlich unbescholten, of good judicial standing, and is under no obligation to mention the tilgt conviction at all.

How long that takes depends on the sentence. In broad terms, the period runs from three years for certain youth offences up to fifteen years for the most serious sentences, with intermediate tiers in between, and the clock generally starts once the sentence itself has been served rather than at the date of conviction. Some sentences do not tilgen automatically at all, and a small number, chiefly a life sentence, never tilgen under any circumstance. Multiple convictions held by the same person tilgen together rather than on separate timelines.

Tilgung is also not the same moment as physical deletion. The underlying data stays in the Strafregister for a further two years after Tilgung before it is actually removed, even though it can no longer lawfully be shown to the person or disclosed on their certificate during that window. The exact tiers, the rules for multiple convictions, and this two-year gap are set out in full, with the governing statute sections, on the certificate of conduct guide.

Rights around your own criminal record

Several protections run through this system rather than sitting in one place. Only the person a Strafregisterbescheinigung concerns can apply for and receive it, so a third party cannot obtain someone else's certificate directly. Certain categories of data, such as narrow court-supervision markers and activity-ban records, are excluded from the ordinary certificate even for the person it concerns, because they exist for specific administrative and judicial purposes rather than for general disclosure.

The GDPR controller and processor structure described above also means the usual data protection framework, covering how conviction data is processed, secured, and eventually deleted, applies to the register. And once Tilgung occurs, the protection becomes close to absolute for ordinary purposes: the tilgt conviction cannot be shown, and the person has no duty to disclose it, with only a narrow carve-out for specific EU and UK judicial cooperation channels rather than for everyday employment or civil matters.

None of this means a person can control who asks to see a certificate in the first place. An employer, a licensing body, or a foreign consulate remains free to request one as a condition of an application, and this page does not suggest otherwise. The protections above concern what the register itself will and will not disclose, not whether a third party may ask for the document.

Where criminal records intersect with other parts of Austrian law

Criminal record rules rarely stand alone. The clearest example is the special Strafregisterbescheinigung for roles mainly involving the supervision, care, education, or nursing of minors, which sits at the boundary between criminal records law and child and youth welfare policy, and requires the requesting organisation itself to justify the request in writing. Certificates also come up routinely in the employment context, since Austrian employers in regulated sectors, and many outside them, ask for one as part of hiring, and in immigration and visa processes, where a foreign authority wants confirmation that an applicant has no relevant Austrian conviction.

For readers researching Austrian law more broadly, the Austria overview page is the starting point for related topics such as employment, tenancy, and family law, several of which intersect with the criminal records system in the ways described above. For the practical steps of actually obtaining a certificate, including current fees, application routes, and the special version for work with children, the certificate of conduct guide is the page to use.