The 2026 New Year’s concert held in Vienna, Austria will be used as a stage for discussions on diplomacy and immigration policy. Austrian Interior Minister Gerhard Karner plans to hold an informal meeting with Cyprus’ Immigration Minister Nicolas Ioannidis and representative of the EU Council Presidency and Finland‘s Interior Minister Marie Rantanen to this New Year’s concert.
The visit, which is separate from the official schedule, will involve working-level discussions focusing on issues of illegal migration, border security, and refugees and asylum. In particular, the rapid implementation and future implementation steps of the strengthened asylum convention recently adopted at the European Union level are discussed as key topics of discussion. The meeting location is scheduled to be the Austrian Ministry of the Interior, and the format will be a working-level informal consultation rather than an official meeting.
Cyprus will assume the presidency of the EU Council for six months from January 1, 2026. Cyprus and Finland are both part of a coalition of member states supporting the idea of setting up asylum procedures and repatriation centers outside Europe. In relation to this, in mid-December last year, 19 EU member states, including Austria, delivered a joint letter to the European Commission supporting the plan.
Ahead of this meeting, Minister Karner evaluated Finland and Cyprus as key partners for transforming Europe’s immigration policy. He also made it clear that establishing an asylum screening and repatriation system in countries outside of Europe will be an important axis of future European immigration policy.
The Austrian Ministry of the Interior plans to maintain countering illegal migration as a top policy priority in 2026. This meeting also contained the meaning of reaffirming the existing policy of simultaneously implementing border control, security, and asylum systems in a situation where the terrorism alert level is still high.