Reacting to Austrian Chancellor Werner Faymann’s proposal to impose stricter regulations on employment abroad published in Austrian daily Österreich’s weekend edition, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade published a statement on Monday, in which he declared that “we reject all discriminative regulations and efforts to introduce such rules. Furthermore, we find it odd that Austria’s Chancellor is planning stricter regulations against EU citizens, while opening its gates wide to migrants”.

The Austrian Chancellor’s proposal includes decreasing the number of foreign employees delegated to Austria by international companies, and introducing limits to the period they are allowed to work in Austria. Furthermore, he would not support a permanent expatriation of international employees, and he would review the terms of their employment in order to achieve that it does not pay off for employers to hire foreign employees.

Mr. Faymann would limit Eastern European employees’ access to the Austrian labour market. According to the newspaper, the Chancellor wishes to review this issue because of increasing unemployment rates, and at the same time, he would also want to limit the number of Eastern European workforce looking for employment in Austria in case of another EU enlargement round.

Mr. Faymann was of the opinion that too many employees are arriving in Austria, because it is less “difficult” to find employment there. He emphasised that people should receive the same wages for the same jobs. Hungarians for example should receive the same wages as other employees in Austria, he said, explaining that Hungarian employees can be employed under more favourable terms than Austrian citizens.

(Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade)