Both in the extra-Alpine and intra-Alpine Variscides, nearly all tectonic units of the European Variscides represent continental units and all units are derived from Gondwana, exhibiting a broad Late Archean to Neoproterozoic U–Pb zircon memory and a lack of a detrital zircons with ages between 1.6 and 1.1 Ga. Ophiolites are scarce and magmatic arcs are subordinate and poorly characterized in both extra-Alpine and intra-Alpine Variscides. An apparent exception is the so-called Subpenninic basement exposed within the Tauern window of the Eastern Alps, where an ophiolite is well exposed in the Stubach Complex, and Neoproterozoic to Cambrian volcanic island arc rocks occur in the largely low-grade Habach Complex and in the high-grade metamorphic Storz Complex. Furthermore, poorly dated micaschists and migmatitic paragneiss (“Altkristallin”) complete the basement lithologies, which also bear pre-Alpine eclogite lenses implying a subducted complex. After our knowledge, the Habach Complex is one of few island arc successions ever postulated in the Variscides, except, e.g., some recently identified arc successions in the Austroalpine and Southalpine units. The Habach and Storz complexes are intruded by Variscan granitoids, the so-called Central Gneisses, and these granitoids are considered to represent remolten arc rocks. The present model is that the Stubach and Habach complexes represent juvenile arc rocks formed between late Ediacaran and Cambrian times, and were located paleogeographically between the Moldanubian zone, which is part of the European Variscides, and the internal Austroalpine zone, which extends from the Eastern Alps via the Carpathians towards Turkey. Previous models discussed the juvenile nature of the Tauern basement, which sharply contrasts to adjacent Moldanubian and Austroalpine zones with their rich Gondwana-derived long history. With this review, we challenge this hypothesis although significantly more data are needed to constrain the age range of the arc complexes, as well as Hf isotopic data to constrain the juvenile character and sources of the arc complexes and Central Gneisses.