The Federal Agency for Care and Support Services (BBU) is responsible for providing legal counselling for refugees and other migrants in Austria. It is owned by the federal government as a GesmbH. The Minister of the Interior has been granted significant influence.

In order to guarantee the independence and quality of the work of the legal counselling service, a quality advisory board was established. It consists of eight experts who were nominated by various organisations (UNHCR, Association of Judges, Austrian Bar Association, etc.) on the basis of their professional expertise and the trust placed in them. The Ludwig Boltzmann Institute of Fundamental and Human Rights (LBI-GMR) is represented on the Quality Advisory Board by Adel-Naim Reyhani.

The annual report of the Quality Advisory Board deals with the main topics that shaped its activities in 2022. The advisory board’s impressions of the work of the legal counselling service so far are very positive and the legal counsellors are characterised by a high level of commitment. They are also supported in their work by very good training programmes and many other measures.

In the report, the Quality Advisory Council also addresses questions and recommendations related to the systemic independence of legal counselling. According to the Quality Advisory Council, a sustainable safeguarding of independence requires legal measures.

Among other things, the Quality Advisory Board identified a need for reform in the following areas:

• systemic conflict of interest due to the appointment of the Federal Minister of the Interior (BMI) as representative of the shareholders’ rights
• lack of legal anchoring of the partiality of legal advisors

The entire annual report can be found in the download area.