07. 02. 12. - 16:00

End of austerity package talks in sight, says Khol

A People’s Party (ÖVP) board member has claimed that the upcoming savings package would be presented within the coming days.

Andreas Khol, who heads the ÖVP’s pensioners' association, said in a TV interview yesterday evening (Mon) that all details would be disclosed "in six to seven days’ time". The ex-ÖVP whip explained that ÖVP chief Michael Spindelegger wanted to finalise the negotiations by the end of last week.

Khol said Spindelegger summoned the ÖVP board for yesterday evening to present the various aspects of the package of state budget cutbacks before finding out that talks with labour unionists and representatives of the industrial sector would take longer than scheduled.

The ÖVP wants to reduce subsidies for Federal Railways (ÖBB) – which suffered immense losses in the past years – dramatically. Reports have it that Social Democratic (SPÖ) Traffic Minister Doris Bures and ÖBB CEO Christian Kern agreed on saving almost 1.5 billion Euros in the coming five years.

Kern recently said his goal was to bring the state-funded railroad company back in the black by next year. The ÖBB chief underlined that the firm managed to lower its annual loss from 330 million Euros in 2010 to 28 million Euros last year.

ÖBB is not the only area affected by cutbacks if the ÖVP have the final say. The conservative party, which has been headed by Spindelegger since May 2011, wants to lower the state’s subsidies for private and public firms and various institutions by 15 per cent in the coming years. If the country’s small size and low population is taken into account, Austria spends more money each year than any other state in the Western World. Around 15 billion Euros were invested this way in the past years.

Vienna’s SPÖ Mayor Michael Häupl already made clear that his city "will not be able to achieve contributing a billion Euros of annual cutbacks". Speaking to the Kurier on Saturday, Häupl pointed out that Vienna had already started to closely cooperate with Lower Austria to avoid a doubling up of subsidies for the homes of people who had a residence in both areas.

Already last month, Häupl said he could imagine lowering the number of seats of the Viennese city hall parliament from 100 to around 80 to save costs. However, the mayor admitted that such a step would rather be a "symbolic act" to prove the willingness to raise efficiency everywhere. Häupl stressed that this measure would be welcomed by populists.

SPÖ Styria chief Franz Voves recently suggested reducing the number of federal parliament members by 18 to 165. The Austrian parliament consisted of 165 delegates until 1971. The suggestion of the governor of Styria found widespread acclaim among fellow party members and political competitors while some columnists warned from "lowering the costs of democracy".

Meanwhile, Austria’s civil servants are bracing for wage freezes. Newspapers report that the SPÖ-ÖVP administration finally agreed about how the public sector could contribute to the austerity of the coming years. The parties allegedly want to increase public servants’ incomes by just one per cent at some point within the next few years – regardless of domestic inflation. Another opportunity may be to confront them with a tax as high as two to three per cent of their salaries. The government could justify the charge by making aware of how secure public sector positions are compared to jobs in the private sector.