Country report, gender equality. How are EU rules transposed into national law? Austria 2020

Publisher:
European Union Publications Office
Publication date:
2020-09-21
Authors:
ISBN:
978-92-76-18961-9

Description:

Austrian legislation is based on the constitutional principles of the Federal Constitutional Act (Bundes-Verfassungsgesetz), additional constitutional legislation, the Federal Financial Constitution Act (Finanzverfassungsesetz) and the provincial constitutional acts for the nine provinces (Bundesländer) which constitute the federal territory. A standing principle of Austrian legislation is a strict adherence to the rule of law according to the doctrine of Stufenbau der Rechtsordnung (which may be translated as steps of legal interdependence). This refers to the hierarchical structure by which every piece of legislation, legal decision, contract or any other legal transaction is only valid if the legal grounds can be directly deduced from other valid legal sources. Competence for legislation is split between the federal and provincial levels by Articles 10 to 15 of the Federal Constitutional Act. For instance, the competence for legislating labour law and federal civil service statutes lies with the federal level, while legislation concerning provincial civil servants and contractual employees, including equal treatment rules, lies with the provincial levels. Federal legislation is enacted by Parliament, which consists of two chambers (Nationalrat and Bundesrat); constitutional changes require two-thirds majorities in each chamber. Administration is the responsibility of federal or provincial authorities according to organisational rules laid out by Articles 7 and 101 to 104 of the Federal Constitutional Act. Civil and criminal cases are decided within the federal court system with the Supreme Court (Oberster Gerichtshof) as the final instance of jurisdiction. Administrative decisions can be appealed within the Administrative Court system (Bundesverwaltungsgericht and nine Landesverwaltungsgerichte) with the Supreme Administrative Court (Verwaltungsgerichtshof) as the final instance of jurisdiction. Questions of the constitutionality of administrative decisions or of federal or provincial legal rules can be taken to the Constitutional Court (Verfassungsgerichtshof). Equal treatment and anti-discrimination rules are mostly implemented by civil law and labour law provisions, which means that claims need to be taken to the civil courts or to the labour and social courts.

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