Austria's government approved an asylum bill on Thursday set to tighten rules for asylum seekers, in spite of criticism that it might incur huge costs on the state budget.

“The additional staff and equipment required to implement the bill would some at a cost of more than €2 million per year,” the Vienna-based Der Standard daily reported.

Under the proposed bill, funds towards paying for the €840 asylum application would be confiscated from future refugees and asylum seekers arriving in Austria.

They would also be required to hand over their mobile phones, which would be analysed for geographic data to determine the route they had travelled before arriving to Austria. If the person is found to have reached Austria via another European Union country, they would be deported back to that country, in line with the Dublin Regulation which says the first EU country an asylum seeker arrived in should be responsible for processing their request.

Austria borders six other EU countries (Czech Republic, Germany, Hungary, Italy, Slovakia, and Slovenia), and many migrants and refugees who travelled along the so-called Balkan route during the peak of the migrant crisis in 2015 had arrived to Austria via EU members Croatia and Slovenia, meaning the bill might result in increased deportations to those two countries.

The bill would also help speed up deportations for asylum seekers who break Austrian law, and the minimum period of residence after which refugees can apply for Austrian citizenship would be increased from six to ten years.

“A strict and efficient law should prevent abuses of asylum rights in Austria,” Interior Minister Herbert Kickl of the right-wing populist Free Party of Austria (FPO) said.

“The new law will also serve as a deterrent. When word gets out that we are checking refugees for money, perhaps many of them might choose against coming here,” said Vice-Chancellor of Austria, Heinz-Christian Strache.

Humanitarian organisations criticised the bill, saying its provisions are inhumane.

“The new regulations pry into refugees’ privacy, which makes their integration (into society) more difficult,” said the SOS Mitmensch human rights group.