Can the works council block a vishing programme in Austria?

Where the system touches human dignity, yes. The statute makes the works council's agreement a condition of the measure's legal effectiveness, and the neighbouring provision that lets a conciliation board substitute agreement expressly does not affect those rights. There is no override route.

What if our Austrian site has no works council?

You are more constrained, not less. Control measures touching human dignity are impermissible unless regulated by a works agreement or, where no works council exists, carried out with the individual employee's agreement, which they may withdraw in writing at any time without notice.

Does an AI voice need different treatment from a live caller in Austria?

Not under the Austrian calling rules. Austria created no category for automatic calling machines, so the discriminator is purpose rather than automation. The AI Act's transparency duties do apply, and they turn on the system being artificial rather than on what the call is for.

Compliance

Voice phishing simulations in Austria

Phone numbers in AustriaProvisioned by Callstrike after approval

Austria has the hardest employee-agreement rule of any country in this portal, and it runs backwards from what everyone expects: a small business with no works council is more constrained by a voice phishing simulation than a large one with a council that has signed. Work out which branch you are on before anything else, because the deliverable is different in each.

Phone numbers

Supplied by Callstrike

Local numbers in Austria, after a one-time approval.

Running a simulation

Permitted, with the right agreement in place

With a works council its agreement is a validity condition. Without one, each employee's is.

Consent

Individually decisive, and revocable

Where no works council exists, each person's agreement can be withdrawn in writing at any time.

Getting a phone number in Austria

One approval per country, completed in the console.

Provisioned by Callstrike after approval

Numbers here are not released from open inventory. Your workspace is cleared for this country once, and Callstrike then provisions a dedicated number against it for your simulations. Approval is a one-time, per-country step and usually takes 3 to 5 business days. We only ask for what the regulator requires.

Austrian numbers are not released from open inventory, so your workspace is cleared once and Callstrike then provisions a dedicated Austrian number against it. The clearance names a person as well as a company: the authorised representative, evidenced by a government-issued identity document, a passport or a bank confirmation, alongside the business name and an address from the company book inside the area the number's prefix covers.

Two things about the caller identity are worth knowing before the scenario is written. The rule that binds you is general rather than scoped to advertising: a callable number in which you hold the right of use must be the one transmitted, on every call, with an administrative penalty of up to fifty thousand euros, and no security-testing exemption exists anywhere in either instrument. And Austria's anti-spoofing regime is fully phased in, so where the terminating network cannot authenticate the call the number is suppressed before your employee ever sees it. Holding a clean right of use is necessary here and it is not sufficient.

01Complete the regulatory clearance formYour administrator, in the Callstrike console. The form asks only for what the regulator requires.
02Approval is granted against your workspaceTypically three to five business days, and once only for as long as you operate here.
03A dedicated number in Austria is assigned to youCallstrike
04Build and launch the campaignYour team

What you provide	Accepted evidence, any one of
Name of authorized representative	Government-issued ID, Passport, Bank confirmation of identity
Business name	Excerpt from company book or registration
Business addressMust be within locality or region covered by the phone number's prefix; a PO Box is not acceptable where a local address is required.	Excerpt from company book or registration showing matching address, Utility bill, Tax notice, Rent receipt, Title deed

These requirements are set by the carrier and can change. The form in the console is generated from their current rules, so treat it as authoritative and this table as a summary of what to have ready. Checked 2026-09-07.

Is it lawful to run a simulation in Austria?

The position in short, before your counsel reads the detail below.

Yes, and Austria is unusually clean on the question everyone worries about first. Its transposition of the European rule on unsolicited communications is a single sentence about calls for advertising purposes, and the country created no separate category for automated calling machines at all: a search of consolidated federal law in force returns no occurrence of the German terms for one. So the discriminator is purpose rather than automation, and there is correspondingly nothing for a live operator to be an answer to. Anyone selling you a human in the loop as a route around Austrian law is describing a distinction Austrian law never drew.

Where to look for the real constraint is labour law, not data protection law. There is no Austrian counterpart to the German employee-data provision and the European opening clause was not used for the private sector, so a programme researched from the German template hunts for a section that does not exist and misses the one that matters. On the data protection side the authority applies the ordinary balancing test, layered over a constitutional provision requiring that even a permissible interference be carried out in the mildest way that achieves the aim. That sentence is what a customer's data protection officer will quote at you.

Now the two branches. Where a works council exists, the introduction of control measures and technical systems that touch human dignity requires its agreement for the measure's legal effectiveness, and a conciliation board cannot substitute that agreement where dignity is engaged. Where no works council exists, the measure is impermissible outright unless carried out with each employee's agreement, and that agreement may be withdrawn in writing at any time without notice. A council is established from five permanent employees, so below that threshold the second branch is the operative one and it is the harder of the two to run.

Recording splits in an unusual and quite practical way: making the recording is usually fine, and sharing it is the offence. A participant is a user for the purposes of the telecoms prohibition, and obtaining knowledge of a statement addressed to you is not the criminal act. Making the recording of a non-public statement accessible to a third party for whom it was not intended, without the speaker's agreement, carries up to a year or seven hundred and twenty daily rates. So the Austrian question is not may we record. It is who will hear it, and prosecution requires the victim's authorisation, which puts the trigger in the employee's hand.

What your company needs to do

6 items, in the order you will need them.

Work out which branch applies before you plan anythingAustria-specificA works council is established from five permanent employees. With one, you are negotiating a written works agreement that is a condition of the measure working at all. Without one, you are collecting individual agreements that each person can withdraw in writing at any time. Those are different projects with different artefacts.
Expect the agreement question to attach, whatever you intendAustria-specificThe Supreme Court holds that a measure is subject to agreement as soon as the arrangement is objectively capable of controlling employees, even where you have no intention of controlling anyone. Whether the concrete system touches human dignity is then a case-by-case balance, and nobody quoting the statute at you can tell you which side you land on.
Do not plan on the conciliation board as a fallbackAustria-specificThe provision that lets a board substitute the council's agreement for evaluation systems closes its own door: it does not affect the agreement rights arising under the human-dignity provision. Where dignity is touched there is no substitution route, which is a real difference from Germany and the one most often assumed away.
Decide who may hear a recording before you make oneAustria-specificPlaying an employee's recorded call to their manager, to a client or in a training deck is precisely the act the criminal provision describes, and the employee holds the complaint. Either restrict playback to the speaker and get written agreement for anything wider, or capture outcomes rather than audio.
Transmit a number you hold the right of use in, on every callAustria-specificThe general rule is not waivable, because it protects the integrity of the numbering plan rather than a private interest the called party could give up, so the employee's agreement does not help. Do not reason from the advertising-scoped provision that most commentary cites; it produces a falsely permissive answer.
Do the impact assessment, and note what the works agreement does to itThe Austrian list naming processing that requires one covers new or novel technologies and names artificial intelligence expressly, which lands on a synthetic-voice exercise directly. The same regulation carries a carve-out where a works agreement exists, and the drafting is ambiguous about how far it reaches, so do not rely on it to skip the assessment.

The controls that do the work

How Callstrike is configured, and which provision in Austria each choice answers.

Auto-hangup before disclosure

The bot ends the call at the moment an employee starts to give up a credential or a piece of personal data, so the thing the pretext asked for is never spoken into the system and never stored.

Austria's constitutional provision on data secrecy requires that even a permissible interference be carried out in the mildest way that achieves the aim, and that is the sentence the whole programme is judged against. A call that ends the instant an employee begins to give up a credential is the mildest version of this exercise that still measures anything: the aim is achieved and the credential is never acquired. It is the strongest single argument in the human-dignity balance, on either branch.

In-call debrief and follow-up

A second voice breaks character as soon as the call ends, explains what just happened and why it worked, and a follow-up email repeats it in writing while the moment is still sharp.

Whether the concrete system touches human dignity is a comprehensive balancing of the mutual interests in each individual case, so what the exercise actually does to the person is the evidence rather than the framing. A second voice that breaks character the moment the call ends, and vishing training in writing the same day, belongs in the works agreement as a commitment rather than in the brochure as a feature. It is also what keeps the recording out of anyone else's hands.

Consent Management

Two modes: collect consent now, over email, Slack or Teams with a full audit trail per employee; or record that your organisation already has this covered, by uploading the policy, handbook clause or agreement and confirming the scope it applies to. The document is hashed, the attestation is signed and timestamped, and an audit email is issued. Included on every plan.

On the branch where no works council exists, this is not a documentation aid, it is the mechanism the measure runs on: each employee's agreement is the precondition, it is revocable in writing at any time without notice, and every withdrawal removes that person from the programme. A per-person audit trail over email, Slack or Teams is what makes that state knowable at campaign time rather than after somebody was called who had withdrawn.

SCORM module

An interactive web presentation on voice-phishing risk, delivered through your own LMS, which then invites the learner to opt into a web call with the bot. A call the person starts themselves in a browser is not a telephone call, so telephony rules do not reach it.

Where a works agreement is still being negotiated, or where individual agreements are still coming in, this route reaches everyone in the meantime. Callstrike's vishing simulator can deliver the same deepfake voice through a web call the learner starts themselves after the module. A call a person opens in their own browser transmits no Austrian number at all, so the right-of-use rule and the anti-spoofing suppression have nothing to attach to.

Consent Management is included on every plan. See AI voice phishing simulation and human-in-the-loop voice phishing for how each is delivered.

The sourced position

Everything above, with the instruments behind it. Every claim cites the statute or the regulator it comes from, so your counsel can verify it rather than rely on our summary.

Look in labour law, because the data protection act is silent

The first thing to get right about Austria is where to look. There is no Austrian counterpart to the German employee-data provision, and the European opening clause for employment-specific rules was not used for the private sector. A search of all consolidated federal law in force finds the employment-context wording only in the civil service act, and the data protection act itself has no employment section at all. So the whole monitoring question in Austria runs through labour law, and anyone working from the German template will hunt for a provision that is not there.

On the data protection side the authority applies the ordinary balancing test, requiring cumulatively that a legitimate interest is pursued, that the processing is necessary to realise it, and that the interests or fundamental rights of the person do not override it. Layered above that is something most member states do not have: a constitutional provision on secrecy of personal data, which permits restrictions only to protect the overriding legitimate interests of another and requires that even a permissible interference be carried out in the mildest way that achieves the aim. That least-intrusive formulation is the sentence a customer's data protection officer will quote back at you, and it is worth answering in the assessment rather than in the meeting.

One point we are deliberately not making: we could find no published statement from the Austrian data protection authority that agreement in the employment relationship is not freely given. That proposition is true in many neighbouring countries and it may well be the Austrian position, but we searched the authority's decisions and its website and could not source it, so it is not asserted here. What is sourceable is that in its own decisions the authority assesses employer monitoring under the balancing test rather than under agreement.

An impact assessment is effectively unavoidable. The Austrian regulation listing processing that requires one names processing using new or novel technologies or organisational solutions which make the effects on the people concerned harder to assess, and it names the use of artificial intelligence expressly. A synthetic-voice simulation lands on that item directly. The same regulation carries a sentence disapplying the requirement in the employment context where a works agreement or the staff representation's agreement exists, which makes the works agreement do double duty. We flag that the drafting of that carve-out is ambiguous about how much of the list it reaches, and we are not going to resolve it for you.

Capture is usually fine, and sharing the recording is the offence

Austria splits the recording question in an unusual and quite practical way: the criminal exposure attaches to what you do with the recording rather than to making it.

The telecoms statute prohibits listening in on, intercepting, recording, capturing or otherwise monitoring messages, and passing on information about them, by persons other than a user without the agreement of all users involved. A user is defined as a person using a public communications service for private or business purposes without necessarily subscribing to it, so a participant is a user and sits outside the prohibition. There is a real design question inside that, which we would rather surface than smooth over: where the recording is performed by a platform that is not sensibly described as a participant, the other-than-a-user limb is live, and no Austrian source we found resolves it.

The criminal code then does the work that matters. Using a recording or listening device to obtain knowledge of a non-public statement not intended for you is an offence, which a participant does not commit because the words are addressed to them. But the next paragraph is the one to plan around: making the recording of a non-public statement accessible to a third party for whom it was not intended, or publishing it, without the speaker's agreement, carries up to one year or 720 daily rates.

Read that against how an awareness programme actually works. Playing an employee's recorded call to their manager, to a client, or in a training deck is precisely the act that paragraph describes. So in Austria the question is not may we record, it is who will hear it. And prosecution requires the victim's authorisation, which in practice means the employee holds the trigger.

Two things worth knowing about the figures. The penalty is 720 daily rates in the current text; search results still circulate the 2006 to 2015 version stating 360, so anyone quoting the lower figure is quoting superseded law. And the ordinary corporate-recording exemptions that exist in some neighbouring systems do not have an Austrian counterpart here.

Austria draws no line at all between a person and a machine

This is the cleanest answer in the batch, and it is favourable and counter-intuitive at the same time.

The Austrian transposition of the European rule on unsolicited communications is a single sentence: calls, including the sending of faxes, for advertising purposes without the user's prior agreement are impermissible. That is it. Austria created no separate category for automated calling machines at all. A search of all consolidated federal law in force returns no occurrence of the German terms for an automatic calling machine or an automatic dialler, in any statute.

Two consequences follow and both matter to how this product is sold. First, the discriminator in Austrian law is purpose and not automation, so an authorised internal security test is outside the rule for exactly the same reason whether a person or a synthetic voice is speaking. Second, there is correspondingly nothing for a live operator to bypass, because there is no automated-dialler permission to obtain and none to breach. Anyone selling human-in-the-loop as a route around Austrian law is describing a distinction Austrian law never drew.

The European transparency rule is a different matter and it does reach Austria. Article 50 of the AI Act has applied since 2 August 2026, requiring a system built to interact directly with people to be designed so the person is informed they are dealing with an AI system, and requiring a deployer of a system generating or manipulating audio constituting a deep fake to disclose that the content is artificially generated, in both cases at the latest at the time of the first interaction or exposure. The only exceptions on the face of the text are use authorised by law to detect, prevent, investigate or prosecute criminal offences, and evidently artistic or fictional works. An employer's own authorisation is not authorisation by law, and the exemption for cases where the AI origin is obvious is unavailable by design in an exercise built so that it is not.

There is an Austrian wrinkle underneath that. The national authority for those transparency duties has not been designated: the telecoms regulator's own published answer is that there is as yet no national implementation of the AI Act's competences in Austria, covering both the market surveillance authorities and the notifying authority. Its artificial-intelligence service point is an advisory desk created before the Regulation existed, with no inspection or penalty powers. The duty binds regardless, because a Regulation does not wait for a national authority.

A second article of the same Regulation decides whether a voice product may ship an analytics feature, and the tier it sits in is the whole point. Using an AI system to infer emotions of a natural person in the workplace is a prohibited practice rather than a regulated one, in force since 2 February 2025 and carrying up to thirty-five million euros or seven per cent of worldwide turnover, subject only to an exception for medical or safety reasons. Prohibited means there is no conformity route, no documentation that cures it and no supervisory permission to seek. The gate is the definition of an emotion recognition system, which is confined to inference from biometric data, so a product that records who disclosed a credential is nowhere near it and one that scores how anxious a named employee sounded is arguing about a definition at the top penalty tier.

The rule that binds you is general, and the famous one is not

Almost everyone writing about Austrian caller identification cites the wrong provision, and the mistake produces a falsely permissive answer, so start with what the right one says.

The telecoms act provides that communication parameters for which no proper right of use exists may not be used. That is general. It applies to every call, it carries no purpose qualifier, and the numbering regulation puts the duty on the subscriber directly: except in specified cases, the subscriber and every network and service operator involved in a national connection must ensure, within their sphere of influence, that a callable number in which the subscriber holds the right of use is transmitted to the called subscriber. Breach carries an administrative penalty of up to 50,000 euros.

The provision usually quoted instead says that in the case of telephone calls for advertising purposes the caller may not suppress or falsify the number. Scope your analysis to that and, since a security test is not advertising, you conclude there is no constraint at all. The general rule above is the constraint, and it is not waivable: it protects the integrity of the numbering plan rather than a private interest the called party could give up, so the employee's agreement does not help. We looked for a security-testing, authorisation or agreement exemption across the whole of both instruments and there is none.

Austria also runs an anti-spoofing regime at the network edge, and it is already fully phased in. Where authenticity cannot be assured for a call by a suitable technical procedure, the display of the number must be suppressed, and where the check yields unambiguous indications that the call does not originate from the signalled subscriber, delivery may be blocked. The obligation reached mobile destinations on 1 September 2024 and all other numbers at the end of that year.

So the operational rule for Austria is stricter than the paperwork suggests. Holding a clean right of use is necessary, and it is not sufficient: the origination path also has to be one the terminating network can authenticate, or the number is stripped before the employee sees it.

What the country matrix holds for Austria

Number types:: Local
Restricted for automated outbound:: None recorded

Generated from the same country matrix the platform enforces at dispatch, so it cannot drift from what you can actually buy.

A works agreement, or an individual agreement that evaporates

Austria is the country in this batch where the employee side can genuinely stop the programme, and the mechanism differs depending on whether a works council exists. Both branches are harder than people expect.

Where there is a works council, the statute provides that the introduction of control measures and technical systems for controlling employees, insofar as those measures touch human dignity, requires the works council's agreement for their legal effectiveness. Note the words: not consultation, not information, but a condition of the measure being legally effective at all. And a works agreement in these matters may be terminated in writing by either party at any time without notice where it contains no term, so it is a standing relationship rather than a signature you obtain once.

A neighbouring provision allows a conciliation board to substitute the works council's agreement for certain systems, including systems for evaluating employees. It is tempting to reach for it, and its own third paragraph closes the door: it does not affect the agreement rights arising under the human-dignity provision. So where dignity is touched there is no substitution route.

Whether a simulation touches human dignity is a two-step question the courts have answered in structure but not in outcome. The first step is close to automatic: the Supreme Court holds that a measure is subject to agreement as soon as the arrangement is objectively capable of controlling employees, even where the employer has no intention of controlling anyone, so what matters is not what is actually monitored but what specifically can be. The second step, whether the concrete system installed touches human dignity, requires a comprehensive balancing of the mutual interests in each individual case. Worked examples run in both directions: fingerprint access control and vehicle tracking during work and free time do touch it; an ordinary clock-in stamp does not, so long as it does not permit a movement profile across the working day. We cannot tell you which side your programme lands on, and neither can anyone quoting the statute at you.

Now the branch that surprises people. Where there is no works council, the measure is not unregulated: the employment contract law adaptation act provides that the introduction and use of control measures and technical systems which touch human dignity is impermissible, unless regulated by a works agreement or, in establishments where no works council is set up, carried out with the employee's agreement. And that agreement may be terminated in writing at any time without notice where there is no written arrangement about its duration. A works council is established where at least five employees are permanently employed, so below that threshold this is the operative route. The practical consequence is that a small Austrian employer has a revocable, per-person precondition rather than one negotiated agreement, and every withdrawal removes that person from the programme.

One more distinction, from the data protection authority and directly on point: works agreements can be concluded only for general measures, and checks on individual employees carried out for a particular reason and only in the individual case are not covered. A scheduled, recurring, workforce-wide simulation is squarely the general measure that needs the agreement. The same decision records that the authority leaves the co-determination question to the labour courts, so winning a data protection complaint does not cure a works agreement defect. Two forums, two tests.

What must exist on paper is therefore concrete: a written works agreement, posted in the establishment or displayed where all employees can reach it, with a copy sent to the statutory interest bodies on each side, which cannot be set aside or narrowed by individual contract, plus notification to the works council of which categories of employee data are processed automatically and the opportunity on request to examine the basis for that processing.

The new cyber act is passed and not yet in force

Austria's position here is unusual and easy to get wrong in the reassuring direction, because a December 2025 headline reads as though the country has finished.

NIS2 was transposed by an act published on 23 December 2025, but its substantive provisions enter into force on 1 October 2026. Until then Austria operates the earlier 2018 regime. That is not an inference: the register's own in-force computation shows the new act with two provisions in force today and 56 on 1 October, and the old act with 32 today and none on that date. The delay has a cause worth knowing, since the 2024 attempt failed to reach the two-thirds majority the constitutional content required and the second attempt passed in December 2025.

When it does arrive, the human-layer duty is narrow. Management bodies of essential and important entities must attend cybersecurity training designed for them, and the entities must regularly offer corresponding training to employees. That is a duty to provide training, it names no channel, and it is not a testing mandate. Registration runs within three months of entry into force, which lands in early 2027 rather than the end of 2026 that circulates in vendor material.

For financial entities DORA applies directly and Austria has its own implementing statute. Its testing regime requires advanced threat-led penetration testing at least every three years for entities in scope, performed on live production systems. Be precise about what it does not say: the Regulation itself contains no occurrence of social engineering, phishing or voice at all. The delegated regulation supplementing it is the only binding text in the set that mentions social engineering, and it does so as a leash rather than a demand, requiring the red team test plan to state the tactics, techniques and procedures allowed and not allowed, including ethical boundaries for social engineering. A compliant plan may put social engineering entirely in the not-allowed column.

The national threat-led testing framework exists, run by the national bank with the financial market authority. Its own guide names no channel either. So the accurate summary for an Austrian buyer is that nothing in the stack requires this technique, and the strongest true statement available is that the delegated regulation presupposes social engineering as an available technique whose limits must be written down.

Take this further

Research prompt for your own AI assistant

Paste into Claude, Harvey or your firm's tool to pressure-test the position above.

You are advising on an authorised internal security exercise in AUSTRIA. Our own employees receive a simulated voice-phishing call, placed by our vendor on our instruction, to measure susceptibility. No credential is captured or stored. Tell me first which branch applies to us.

Verify or correct each proposition below against primary Austrian sources:

1. ⚠ ArbVG s.96(1) Z 3 makes the works council's agreement a condition of the measure's LEGAL EFFECTIVENESS where human dignity is touched, and s.96a(3) means the Einigungsstelle cannot substitute it.
2. ⚠ AVRAG s.10 makes the measure impermissible outright with no works council, unless each employee agrees, terminable in writing at any time without notice. A works council is established from five permanent employees.
3. OGH RS0134091 (9 ObA 60/22x): objective capability triggers the agreement requirement; the dignity question is then a case-by-case balance.
4. TKG s.161(3) puts a participant outside the interception prohibition as a 'user'; StGB s.120(2) makes making the recording accessible to a third party the offence, at 720 daily rates in the current text (NOT 360, which is the 2006 to 2015 version).
5. ⚠ TKG s.174(2) is scoped to 'Telefonanrufen zu Werbezwecken' and is the WRONG provision for caller ID. The binding rule is TKG s.115(2) with KEM-V s.5(3), which binds the subscriber on every call at up to EUR 50,000, with no exemption.
6. Austria created no automated-calling-machine category at all in TKG s.174.
7. DSFA-V s.2(2) names new technologies and artificial intelligence; assess the scope of its works-agreement carve-out.

Flag anything that has changed since September 2026. ⚠ KEM-V s.5 carried an expiry of 30 September 2026; confirm the successor text.

Common questions

Can the works council block a vishing programme in Austria?: Where the system touches human dignity, yes. The statute makes the works council's agreement a condition of the measure's legal effectiveness, and the neighbouring provision that lets a conciliation board substitute agreement expressly does not affect those rights. There is no override route.
What if our Austrian site has no works council?: You are more constrained, not less. Control measures touching human dignity are impermissible unless regulated by a works agreement or, where no works council exists, carried out with the individual employee's agreement, which they may withdraw in writing at any time without notice.
Does an AI voice need different treatment from a live caller in Austria?: Not under the Austrian calling rules. Austria created no category for automatic calling machines, so the discriminator is purpose rather than automation. The AI Act's transparency duties do apply, and they turn on the system being artificial rather than on what the call is for.
Can we record and then share the recording internally?: Recording as a participant is generally outside the offences. Making the recording of a non-public statement accessible to a third party for whom it was not intended, without the speaker's agreement, carries up to a year or 720 daily rates. Playing a call to a manager or in a training deck is that act.

Elsewhere in Western Europe

The rules differ by country even inside one region. These are the nearest guides to this one, each showing how phone numbers are obtained there.