Centralised European electoral records
(1) The Federal Minister of the Interior shall be authorized to keep centralised European electoral records for the purpose of exchanging information with the competent bodies for any information exchange in accordance with the laws of the Member States of the European Union. The exchange of information shall relate to:
1. the exercise of the right to vote by Austrian citizens with principal domicile in another Member States of the European Union,
2. the exercise of the right to vote by citizens of the European Union with principal domicile in Austria and not having Austrian nationality.
(2) For the purpose of the aforementioned paragraph, the municipalities shall communicate their information in accordance with para 1 once a year, as well as immediately following the reference date of 31 December for any elections to the European Parliament, to their respective federal province. If any changes should occur in the European electoral records (§ 22 of the European Elections Regulations, Federal Law Gazette No. 117/1996 begin_of_the_skype_highlighting FREE 117/1996 end_of_the_skype_highlighting) after the closing of the electoral records, these changes shall be communicated without delay to the respective federal province.
(3) Municipalities that keep their European electoral records in a computer-supported form, or who commission other legal entitites with the data-exchange, shall communicate the data (para 2) by means of machine-readable data carriers or by means of remote data processing. In this connection, information in accordance with para 1 shall be marked as such.
(4) Municipalities that do not keep their European electoral records in a computer-supported form, and who do not commission other legal entitites with the data exchange, shall communicate the data concerning the groups of persons listed in items 1 and 2 of para 1 separate from one another.
(5) The federal provinces shall communicate the data of the municipalities to the Federal Minister of the Interior on 15 January of every year, in addition to the dates resulting from para 2, by means of remote data processing.
(6) The data file of persons who are entitled to vote, as contained in the centralised European electoral records, shall comprise all the data listed in § 1, para 3. Any retrieval of data from the total volume of stored data may be possible only according to name or nationality.
(7) The Federal Minister of the Interior shall communicate, through the Federal Ministry for Foreign Affairs, to the competent authorities, in accordance with the national laws of the Member States of the European Union, the data on their nationals stored in the European electoral records, in time before any elections to the European Parliament. In addition, the communication of data, including data to other Member States, is only admissible for the purpose of exchanging information in accordance with para 1.
(8) The data in the centralised European electoral records may be linked to the data of the centralised electoral records (§ 3, para 4, of the 1997 Electoral Records Act).
