Merger of police and gendarmerie
In Austria, the amalgamation of the police and gendarmerie is the amalgamation of the federal security guard corps , the criminal police corps and the federal gendarmerie to form the unified federal police guard on July 1, 2005 . The name used by the media and the population comes from the fact that the uniformed security guard and the detectives in particular have always been referred to as the “ police ”.
According to the Federal Ministry of the Interior, it was the largest administrative renewal project in Austria since 1945. In the BMI, 32 central departments dealt with around 1,600 work packages. There were also implementation teams in the federal states. Around 27,800 civil servants were affected by the reform, including almost 15,000 gendarmerie officers, 10,400 security guards, 2,000 detectives and almost 400 administrative and contract employees.
The reform was initiated on March 31, 2003 when the four section heads of the BMI were commissioned, under the direction of Franz Lang , to set up a core project team called "team04 - the new executive". This team developed the work breakdown structure. In July 2003 the rough concept was ready and in March 2004 the "team04" handed over the implementation proposal to the interior minister at the time, Ernst Strasser, with the planned structure and process organization of the new uniform guard as well as all plans. According to the concept, one of the most important goals was "to create the best possible organizational conditions in order to guarantee the citizens of our country the highest possible level of public safety in the long term". In 2000, Strasser had refused to merge the police and the gendarmerie with the words “It's like when the Dalai Lama demands that the Catholic and Protestant churches be merged”.
Challenges arose, particularly in legal, organizational and political terms. The legal basis for the new guard, an extensive amendment to the Security Police Act , was decided by the National Council on December 9, 2004 and by the Federal Council on December 20, 2004. There were also adjustments to other laws and a number of ordinances. On July 1, 2005, the new "Federal Police" officially started work.
Since then, the new “Federal Police” has been the BMI's only guard, the “umbrella organization” is the General Directorate for Public Safety in the BMI. In each federal state a state police command (LPK) was set up, to which the district and city police command (BPK, SPK) were subordinated. These include police inspections (PI) and specialist inspections (border police inspections , service dog inspections , maritime and electricity police inspections , police detention centers ). Today there are around 27,200 police officers in Austria. The proportion of women is over ten percent, and the trend is rising.
In the course of the reform and amalgamation of the new federal police, an attempt was made to impose the "old" gendarmerie system, which appeared to be unsuitable, especially with regard to the performance of duties in the federal capital Vienna, on the areas of responsibility of the former federal security guard. Although this may have worked in the area of training and equipment, it turned out that a 1: 1 transfer of the gendarmerie's service system to the urban area demonstrated the alleged flexibility of this system, which in some areas did not exist. Due to the traditionally greater influence of the gendarmerie in the area of the interior ministry, it was foreseeable that the merger would also take place under the leadership of the former gendarmes. This can also be seen in the fact that an overwhelming proportion of the top positions within the new Federal Police were occupied by former gendarmes. "It says police, gendarmerie is inside" is a true saying. What this meant for the quality of work, especially in urban areas, was also shown by the assessment of former top civil servants, who came to similar conclusions.
Web links
- ipa.at - Voices on the amalgamation of police and gendarmerie