2023-09-15 12:06:31
Companies have been waiting for promised funding for more than three years – the first companies are suing – the Chamber of Commerce is providing funds with five million euros for model lawsuits
Vienna (OTS) – Viennese hotels have been waiting for promised pandemic aid funds to be paid out for three and a half years. Many of them have not yet received a euro of the promised funds. But the costs of the loans that had to be taken out to pay the fixed costs continue to run and the interest rates are rising enormously. “We are talking regarding hotels of all sizes, from small guesthouses to luxury hotels in the Ringstrasse Palace,” says Dominic Schmid, chairman of the hotel industry specialist group at the Vienna Chamber of Commerce.
“If revenue is missing for nine and a half months, a large part of the costs continue and you don’t know whether you will ever get the money, nobody can go back to business as usual. The companies do not know whether COFAG will compensate them, and if so, to what extent and whether it will demand the money back. No one there knows today what will happen tomorrow. What we know: That any compensation paid out today only covers 80% of the damage during the pandemic due to high inflation,” criticizes Alexander Ipp, Vice President of the Austrian Hoteliers Association and State Chairman in Vienna, of the lack of legal certainty and delayed payments. The first companies have already filed lawsuits.
Together, they therefore recommend that their member companies examine lawsuits once morest COFAG, the federal Covid-19 financing agency. “If there is no other way, and apparently there is no other way, you have to sue. “It cannot be the case that hotels go under because promises are not kept,” Schmid calls on hoteliers to take the next step. After all, many of them have been waiting for fixed costs to be reimbursed for three and a half years: “The houses were serviced and maintained when they were closed, salaries were paid and increased by 20 percent in the meantime, energy costs by up to 300 percent. Companies are on the brink. It’s time for drastic measures like lawsuits. The Vienna Chamber of Commerce supports them with its fund for model lawsuits.”
Of course, mistakes can happen in such an exceptional situation, says Ipp: “But communicating incorrect deadlines, wanting to regulate leases and rent unconstitutionally and incorrectly interpreting EU regulations for affiliated companies so that companies endanger their existence: That’s not possible.” That 99% of Applications, as it has been said for months, have been paid out does not help any company that continues to be denied compensation on a large scale. “And there are many of them, and they have employees and suppliers. This cannot be ignored.” Ipp therefore expressly welcomes the fact that the Vienna Chamber of Commerce supports its members legally and financially in the fight for their rights: “With this consistency they absolutely stand out.”
To the relief fund
The Executive Board of the Vienna Chamber of Commerce decided in the summer to endow a fund with five million euros. In the future, this fund is intended to support Viennese companies in model lawsuits and model cases that have relied in good faith on the Republic for aid.
Questions & Contact:
Mag. (FH) Stephan Fuchs
Vienna Chamber of Commerce
Press and newsroom
T +43 1 514 50-1465
E stephan.fuchs@wkw.at
W news.wko.at/wien
Martin Stanits
Head of Public Affairs | Company spokesperson
AUSTRIAN HOTELIER ASSOCIATION
T: +43 664 5160831 | martin.stanits@oehv.at | oehv.at
facebook.com/hoteliervereinigung | instagram.com/oehv.hoteliervereinigung
1694779865
#COFAG #Vienna #ÖHV #recommend #investigating #lawsuit #relief #fund
