Please note the following advice!
Advice for administrative formalities
Dealing with authorities is not always easy and legal guidelines are sometimes difficult to understand. The following advice may be helpful for you:
• At the beginning of your stay it might be helpful to get some assistance for your administrative formalities. However: As soon as possible you should manage your administrative formalities on your own. In this way you get personally into contact with various authorities and magistrates and get to know how to deal with them faster.
• Have confidence in Austria’s authorities – even if you had negative experiences in your home country. The civil servants, who are concerned with your causes, will try to assist you in many ways.
• Please notice that, in Austria, civil servants are forbidden to accept gifts within the scope of their work. If you give a civil servant a present in the course of his or her official act, it is possible that this is assessed as bribery of public officials. You and the civil servant are guilty of an offence!
• Take along all your original documents and some additional replicas. In this way you help saving time and potential additional charges.
• You will frequently need certified translations of your most important documents. Get these translations already at the beginning of your stay.
• Translations must be from a court-approved translator. Otherwise the authorities will not approve your translated documents.
• Put all important documents into one folder. In this way you always have all potentially required documents with you and cannot forget any important documents.
• Make sure, that you have all your important documents with you in Austria.
Links
• help.gv.at (Authorities–address search)
• sozialversicherung.at (List of authorities, bureaus and institutions)