The SPÖ will not agree to the request. This was made clear on Thursday by the group leader in the commission, Thomas Reindl. “We will not approve the requests for internal communication,” announced Reindl. It is assumed that data protection principles would be violated. This also applies to personal rights.
The communication relevant to the topic is in the files anyway, Reindl assured. He also pointed out that implementation would be difficult. Unlike in the federal government, such data might only be obtained with difficulty from the U-Commission, which is a committee of the municipal council. Ludwig himself had recently stated that he would be guided by the suggestion of the independent judges in the case – more on this in Ludwig: Asylum seekers should be allowed to work.
ÖVP wants to see chats, appointments and phone lists
The ÖVP would like to see chats, calendar entries or telephone lists from Ludwig and also from Finance City Councilor Peter Hanke (SPÖ) – more on this in Wien Energie: ÖVP wants Ludwig’s mobile phone. In any case, ÖVP club and parliamentary group chairman Markus Wölbitsch assumes that the applications are legally compliant. Appropriate expertise had been obtained, he emphasized to the APA.
In view of the behavior of the SPÖ in parliament, the reference to formalities or the rights of third parties is a farce, he found. “The whole debate is only superficially regarding these issues, in reality it is purely regarding preventing the gathering of evidence.”
Minority can request evidence
Due to the new regulations for the U-Commission in Vienna, a minority can request evidence. The majority – i.e. the government factions SPÖ and NEOS – cannot reject the applications. However, they can ask the three chairmen for a decision. These then act as an arbitration board and must announce within two weeks whether the respective application is admissible or not.
That the chat request is legally difficult might also be indicated by the fact that the chairman of the commission, Martin Pühringer, recently asked not to bring the motions to a vote immediately, but to wait until the second meeting.
SPÖ wants to question Pühringer, Mahrer and Nepp
The SPÖ plans to apply for a number of witnesses itself on Friday. For example, she wants to question the non-executive city councilors Judith Pühringer (Greens), Karl Mahrer (ÖVP) or Dominik Nepp (FPÖ) from the opposition. The reason given for the desire to be summoned is that the persons concerned also sit on the finance committee or the city senate.
Mahrer is also to be questioned as to whether he may have received documents from the Ministry of Finance with more detailed information. The SPÖ says he let this be known on social media. The ÖVP, in turn, will also submit applications once more, including for consulting contracts and for communication between the city and the banks.
On Thursday, however, it was also announced that the arbitration board had already rejected the first applications. The questioning of executives of other Stadtwerke subsidiaries regarding so-called cash pooling, i.e. mutual financing by group companies, was found to be inappropriate. The People’s Party now wants to submit proposals on this subject in a modified form.
Survey of three experts
Three experts are interviewed: The economist Michael Böheim, ex-Verbund boss Wolfgang Anzengruber and analyst Johannes Benigni are invited to provide information. Among other things, the SPÖ would like to address the fact that protective shields for energy companies have already been set up in other countries. The local companies also recently calculated that 20 billion euros would have to be made available in Austria, reported Reindl.
The ÖVP would like to ask how much stock exchange trading is necessary to secure prices and how to proceed if you want to “maximize” profits. The FPÖ fears that the SPÖ wants to achieve a “whitewash” by the experts, as their parliamentary group leader, club chairman Maximilian Krauss, explained. “The FPÖ would have preferred experts who work outside of this industry and do not earn their fees through this type of business model. This automatically gives the appearance of bias,” he told the APA.
As a result of the price jumps, Wien Energie had to deposit high security deposits for trading in electricity and gas on the stock exchange and was no longer able to raise these from its own resources from the summer. Mayor Ludwig had therefore provided a total of 1.4 billion euros by emergency authority from July. The liquidity bottleneck and the mayor’s emergency loans became public at the end of August, when these 1.4 billion euros were also running out. As a result, the federal government granted a further EUR 2 billion credit line via the Federal Financing Agency (OeBFA).
