Some forms of begging IMO yes. Like persistently ignoring nos right until the pedestrian is quite ready to punch the beggar, in the hope that the pedestrian will pay rather then escalate the situation. Some forms of begging would also fall into a different category such as a short con. And depending on the background it might make sense to make zones and times, where it is forbidden, like especially crowded places.

Some forms do have negative consequences, such as making people expect everyone looking something like typical beggars, who starts talking to you is a beggar automatically, which for instance can earn a Roma/Sinti like looking person in Vienna, who wants to ask for directions, a "No, i give you no money" reaction, before the question is fully formed. Or most strangers who start a conversation with you, eventually beg for money (including thoose who want money for greenpeace or something similiar), which means chating with strangers becomes harder, since everyone goes into begger defence mode immedatly. I am not entirely sure if regulations really help there though.

A single independent beggar, who sits in some corner, where he is not in the way, does not make problems for anyone, so there is not really a good reason to forbid it.

There also is the issue of organized begging, where people in the background provide services, such as driving beggars from for instance Romania to for instance Austria for a fee, and collect part of the income. You get structures at least close to protection rackets there and loansharks, who keep beggars dependent on them and keep them from stopping being beggars. Stopping this would be a good thing, and i don't feel competent to judge, if hindering the pawns or targeting the masterminds is a better strategy. You also have the problem of different jurisdictions and if one jurisdiction can't be bothered to do anything, the authorities in the other can only work on one end.

There are also other reasons to make a difference between street performers and beggars. There might be places where street performers are especially welcome, as tourist attraction or similiar, and/or there might be a rationing of spots, either to prevent bottlenecks in pedestrian traffic, or to keep street performers out of each others hair. You don't want to have beggars take the spots of street perfomers here, even if they make some minimal excuse for a perfomance.

Far as I know, some American cities have laws against "aggressive panhandling", so a beggar can sit there with a cup in front of them, but not go up to everyone and get in their face. I didn't know that begging rackets were such a big problem in Austria. Is there a way of cracking down on the organizers? If they're bringing them in from Romania, I imagine it wouldn't make that much difference to arrest and deport individual beggars, there'll always be more.

There are a statelaws against begging. Some states have banned begging outright, but this has been struck down as unconstitutional. Vienna has laws against aggressive panhandling and begging with minors, that have held in high court.

There is some debate how much begging is actually organized in rackets, that often gets heated and dogmatic, because on the one side are there are bleeding hearts, who think there is something wrong with you, if you don't spill over with unconditional compassion, if you see such poor people, and on the other side, there are thoose, who consider the beggars and propably every eastern european as filthy scum, who should be run out of town with pitchforks.

But even reportages, that try to put beggars in a positive light, occasionally have something in it like "they have to pay their debts with the loan shark" that makes it seem racket like.

I have no idea, to what amount Romania specifically is the source of beggars. After the revolution in Romania, there were suddenly a lot of beggars, who claimed to be refugees from there, and since then Romanian is the default assumption with eastern european seeming beggars. But Austria has within little travel distance various countries, with plenty of poverty, police that is not exactly known for competence and uncorruptability and minorities (mainly Roma AFAIK) on whom are informally excluded from the usual structures that a state gives. For many of theese countries Austria is among the top 3 geographically most convenient countries, whith western european wealth. EU rules make it easy to cross borders.

It's quite obvious that we get plenty of racket begging and crime from thoose countries here. Various methods to combat it have been tried, but it seems nothing really helps. Not even rules like viennese public transport has, that if they catch you begging, they confiscate all cash you carry on yourself, under the assumption that you have it from begging here, help to keep beggars out of the underground lines. There isn't the manpower to prevent it from being viable.

My favourite idea, that also has the manpower problem, would be to have many many social workers, where one apears pretty much as soon as the beggar starts working, and informs him about other options he has. While discussing with the social worker, begging will not work, and if social workers come fast enough, begging would not be viable.