Vienna (OTS) – “I don’t know of any committee in the entire legislative period in which so many, or rather all, of the opposition’s initiatives were postponed. We have arrived in a permanent adjournment loop. The fact that the House can even talk about tourism and urgently needed measures again today is nothing short of a miracle. The reason for this is a proposal that is not epoch-making, but since it concerns the future prospects for tourism research, we support it. But otherwise there is a standstill. The black-green federal government is consistently turning down every important discourse for improvements in tourism,” said FPÖ tourism spokesman NAbg. Gerald Hauser in his contribution to the debate in the National Council yesterday, according to which the federal government should take measures to promote the visibility and networking of tourism research in Austria and develop a project roadmap for a possible future competence center for tourism research.
“But it would actually be much more important if we talked about the prospects for tourism at all. The black-green federal government is not only turning this down in the committee, but also here in the National Council the debate about the tourism sector, which is extremely important for Austria, is being turned down by the ÖVP and the Greens by postponing everything in the committees. Since the beginning of the legislative period, we have been calling for proposals to improve the framework conditions for tourism – for example by strengthening equity capital. However, this motion was postponed again in the last committee. Our demand is clear: equity capital must finally be strengthened. It cannot be the case that the entrepreneur is permanently reduced to a supplicant. He should have the opportunity to improve his capital through his own efforts. “But all the suggestions that we put forward, which also come from experts and are therefore supported by them, are ignored and suppressed by this federal government and especially by the responsible ÖVP Tourism State Secretary Kraus-Winkler,” said Hauser, criticizing everyone’s constant postponement FPÖ applications from the governing parties ÖVP and the Greens in the Tourism Committee.
Hauser continued as further FPÖ demands for improving the framework conditions for tourism businesses: “Interest on equity capital contributed to a company must be stated as an expense – and in the case of borrowed capital, the interest on borrowed capital as an expense – in the balance sheet, so that the motivation increases to bring more equity into the company. Tourism businesses have a lot of land. We libertarians demand that in order to increase fixed assets on the balance sheet, the assets must be upgraded. This application was also repeatedly postponed. So we’re not making any progress, but in particular there’s nothing going on for tourism. At the last meeting we asked the responsible ÖVP state secretary what important measures we as the tourism committee would actually be able to implement by the end of the legislative period. Because it couldn’t have been that little. The 5-year balance sheet is regrettable. But we received no response.”
“We Freedom Party members have been fighting for absolutely necessary improvements to the framework conditions for private landlords for years. I don’t understand that the service quality can be adjusted in such a way that these landlords, after all 40,000 businesses in Austria, have a good chance of continuing to survive in the tourist market. What’s happening all the time: more and more tourism businesses with up to 10 beds are closing because the general conditions simply don’t fit. Regardless of the fact that we libertarians have long been calling for an increase in the number of beds. Since 1957, the number of beds has not been adjusted in line with other changes. Many private landlords now have holiday apartments and a necessary extra bed can mean that the landlord is over the bed limit of 10 beds and thus gets into problems with the authorities. The federal government could have changed that long ago if it had followed our arguments, but it hasn’t. But I guarantee the many small landlords: the FPÖ has been committed to their interests since the beginning and we will continue to do so tirelessly,” said Hauser.
The “funding chaos among tourism businesses” is also a big issue, Hauser explained: “Approximately 1,000 businesses are still waiting for promised funding, which as of February 2024 amounted to 160 million euros. It is not acceptable that if a company is promised funding that it will not be paid out. This chaos must finally be cleared up and COFAG – the federal COVID-19 financing agency GmbH – must also distribute these subsidies to the companies before it is liquidated.”
With regard to the lockdowns for tourism businesses, the Freedom Party quoted from the RKI protocols – the so-called “RKI files” – according to which the experts had determined the situation surrounding COVID-19 and the measures taken in the same way as the FPÖ: “The consequences The lockdown sometimes has more serious consequences than COVID itself.” These are not the words of the Freedom Party, but rather those of the experts on the Corona committees set up by the federal government. “Only outwardly did the black-green-red-pink united party act in completely the opposite way and, of course, damage companies sustainably and against their better judgment. Something like that shouldn’t happen again!” Hauser concluded.
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