The ORF has now fought for access to the list of major recipients in court. This shows that AUA and Vienna Airport were the two biggest beneficiaries. The AUA received 261 million euros, Vienna Airport 107 million euros, data from ORF “Zeit im Bild” show. But other airlines also received short-time work benefits.
In addition to Eurowings (8.5 million euros) and Laudamotion (1.6 million euros), Turkish Airlines (1.2 million), Emirates (1.1 million) and the Russian Aeroflot (950,000 euros) also received short-time work assistance ORF “Zeit im Bild” editorial team. Almost 25 million euros went to Vienna International Airport Security Services Ges.mbH
XXXLutz, Casinos and Magna
Other major recipients were spread across all sectors of the economy. According to ORF information, there was a lot of support for XXXLutz (42 million), Casinos Austria (40 million), Magna and Swarowski (38 million each). The 15 largest recipients include many industrial companies and the State Opera (23 million).
Companies with gaming licenses in Austria received a total of around 75 million euros for short-time work – including the Austrian Lotteries around 2.45 million euros in the summer of 2020. Their main business runs through the website and the tobacconists, which are always open, notes the ORF, which also points out that it itself took advantage of 4.4 million euros in short-time work assistance.
Systematic over-promotion
Of the three large telecom companies, only T-Mobile applied for short-time work and received 2.6 million euros. The company made a profit of 97 million euros in the same year, according to the ORF “Zeit im Bild”. From the retail chains, Interspar received 4.5 million euros for the over 1,000 employees in the restaurants of Interspar and its subsidiary Maximarkt. The Rewe Group (Billa, Penny), on the other hand, only received a few thousand euros; individual ADEG retailers received more funding.
The Court of Auditors already criticized in 2022 that the awarding of Corona short-time work was based on constantly changing guidelines and was not very transparent. In the first year alone (March 2020 to March 2021) there was a systematic over-funding totaling 500 million euros.
