About the author

This blog is a private project that the author, Michael Bailey, has been running to chart the progress of his naturalisation as an Austrian citizen. Having first visited Austria in 1988 on a summer holiday, he spent his year abroad teaching in Western Styria (Steiermark) as part of his Modern Languages degree at the University of St Andrews. When shortly before graduation a job in Brussels for an American telecommunications company fell through, he moved to Austria. He is a German to English in-house translator, specialising in legal and financial texts, and has translated a substantial number of Austrian laws into English.

During the UK’s Referendum on its Membership of the European Union in 2016, he blogged about the referendum from the perspective of a Briton in Europe unable under British electoral law to vote, due to having lived outside of the UK for over 15 years. Following the outcome of the Referendum, he decided to naturalise with his infant son as a Austrian to safeguard rights irrespective of the deal reached, and also to do so prior to the United Kingdom actually leaving the EU, in order to avoid a naturalisation as a third country citizen, and has been an Austrian citizen since 9 July 2018.

Michael was born in 1977 and is married with three children.