Vienna Business Agency Expat Centre & Business Immigration Office — integrated talent-welcome service

Vienna's Wirtschaftsagentur Wien (Vienna Business Agency), a permanent fund of the City of Vienna, runs an Expat Centre (since 2010) and, since October 2021, a Business Immigration Office (BIO) co-located with the city's Immigration and Citizenship Department (MA 35) and the Austrian Employment Service (AMS Wien).

The Expat Centre offers free, confidential consultations on daily-life matters to internationally mobile professionals, their families and employer HR managers, while the BIO's four specialist advisers provide free, multilingual consultations on Austrian residence and work permits so that applicants no longer need to visit multiple offices separately.

Consultations across both services grew from 1,481 in 2019 to 5,180 in 2024, covering professionals from 116 nationalities in more than 15 languages, all free of charge; in 2023, 227 international companies chose Vienna as a new business location, investing a combined €430 million and creating around 1,300 jobs, while over 2004-2024 some 3,000 foreign companies relocated to Vienna, creating 25,000 jobs and investing nearly €5 billion.

By bringing immigration, employment-service and economic-development staff together under one roof, the model reduces the friction that qualified international workers and their employers would otherwise face navigating three separate public bodies.