FPÖ – Ecker: Supreme Court ruling confirms urgent need for reform of cross-border family benefits

2023-07-16 12:58:15

Remove family benefits from the EU regulation and no longer pay an Austrian cent abroad!

Vienna (OTS) – In view of the judgment of the Upper Court, according to which a mother had to fight for eight years to receive childcare allowance in Austria and has now been right, the liberal family spokeswoman NAbg. Rosa Ecker, MBA confirms the demand of the FPÖ: “The cross-border family benefits are not only massively unfair to the Austrian taxpayers and their families and children, but at the same time a huge bureaucracy monster. A reform is long overdue. Family benefits must not be part of EU Regulation 883/2004. The affected family would then not have had to wait and fight for the childcare allowance for years. Because that would have been clear. Conversely, the fact that family benefits would be removed from the EU regulation would finally mean that Austria no longer had to export a cent of family benefits abroad! Because we are talking about tens of millions of euros here, which I see better invested in our own country and in our families here in Austria due to the massive rise in prices and inflation – owed to the ÖVP-Green federal government.”

Ecker continues: “All of this was also shown in this case of the mother, who after eight years of an exhausting legal dispute has finally been awarded the childcare allowance to which she is entitled by the Supreme Court.”

In 2022, more than one billion euros in family allowances and child tax credits were paid abroad, as the answer to a parliamentary question to the responsible Green Social Affairs Minister Rauch showed: “When it comes to transfers abroad, you are not squeamish when dealing with the Austrian ones tax money millions. In this case, however, the Dutch family was resident and – despite the father’s initial employment relationship in the Netherlands – clearly had a claim and had to endure and fight for a long time. I will soon find out how many millions in childcare allowance had to be exported abroad due to the EU regulation by means of a parliamentary question.”