Travel with Manfred

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Copyright © 1995 by Heinz Kantz. All rights reserved.

March 7, 1995

Austria and the European Union

Changes in Austria after Joining the EU

by

Heinz Kantz and Manfred P.

Keywords: Austria, EU, tourist, travel trip report, travel log, travelogue.

I asked Heinz, a friend who is living in Vienna, how Austria was affected by the EU and how it changed since joining the EU about a year ago. This is his reply.

Hi Manfred,

At the beginning of the year you ask once if EU membership has already started to change Austria yet. After two months membership I will try to summarize my personal opinion. Note, this is not an elaborated summary it just reflects things that come in my mind while writing this e-mail. So probably important points are missing and rather irrelevant points are focused with too much detail.

• A lot of price changes have started with beginning of January (or partly even after Christmas). The greatest changes have been in milk products (30 - 50 % less), wheat (50%), noodles, meat, ... Bananas, oranges, coffee are now more expensive because NON-EU states have to pay now higher customs in order to support EU products (bananas from French colonies, ...). At the beginning to the year some products have been sold out, because people did not believe that these reductions will last for long and are only short time bargains (partly they have been right).
• Border controls are partly still there, because Austria has not reached the required level for protecting EU-border till yet. Austria has now a really long EU-border (Checz-rep., Slowaky, Hungary, Slowenia, Switzerland). Some funny points happen know. For example: Although higher amounts of goods and beverages can be transported from one EU-country to another, there are still some limitations which are caused by the EWR (European economy treaty between EU-members and EFTA-members). This treaty is still in action for Austria till the end of 1995. One point of this treaty defines the maximum allowed amount of some alcoholic beverages (e.g. Grappa) which can be transported duty-free from one EFTA-country to and EU-country. These limits are lower than EU-limits. If one plans the import grappa from Italy to Austria and he intends to do this import fully in line with the law, he has to fill out a tax form. However, this is no longer possible directly at Austria boundary. One has to go to Innsbruck to the ministry of finance to get such a form.
• It is now easier to get a job outside Austria within EU. But I cannot say much about this topic.
• Some Austrian laws have been (or have to be) changed in order to be in line with EU. For example:
  • laws about buying land, (EU-members must not be discriminated by law).
  • laws about food have been changed (Lebensmittelgesetz)
  • ...
• Austria has to pay 32 billions OeS "membership fee" to EU. As you can imaging, such am amount requires some substantial changes in the Austrian budget. Especially, after the promise of SPOe and OeVP NOT to increase taxes (and at least they cannot break this promise in the first year). In Oct. there has been elections and SPOe and OeVP have lost 2/3 majority (which means that for laws that change the constitution, at least one other party has to agree). Soon after the elections, SPOe and OeVP argued that reaching a net budget deficit of less than 100 billion is the primary goal. Soon, they presented a "saving packet" (Sparpaket). Unfortunately, these recommendations have not been well elaborated, and the two parties showed no unity, and one point after the other disappeared. But still the promise to reach the goal of less than 100 billion. We will see, on March 10. will be the budget speech of the minister of finance. It is interesting that in none of these discussion, the word EU is mentioned. But these budget discussion is influenced by the fact of paying the membership fee, and fulfilling the treaty of Maastricht which requires a net deficit of less than 3 % of BIP.
• There are some discussions about political competences in EU. But that's not really unexpected.
• Changes of prices from Dec. to January has been 2.7 % (/year). So in this statistics no decrease of prices has been seen. However it is argued that most of the reductions are not included in this statistics. I have not heard about the prices changes from Jan to Feb. till yet. But probably it is still to early to say anything significant.
• Prices for expensive goods such as cars, electronics, ... have not really been changed.
• Opinion polls say that a solid majority of Austrians still say yes to EU.

A poll done by the Austrian magazine NEWS 2 months later in May 1995 showed that 47 percent of the Austrians would now vote against joining the EU, and only 35 percent are in favor of being part of the EU.

Heinz

Update from 2001

After the Sept 11, 2001 attack on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon also the EU has put into place stronger anti-terrorist laws and information about terrorists is flowing more freely between EU countries. This will also be expanded and in the near future not only information but the captured terrorists will be quickly and easily being handed over to other EU countries.

We are in the EU for 6 years already and this is just the first step. It will take another 10 or 20 years to bring the EU members even closer and to make them a truly strong single unit. While it takes time, I am all for it.