BRATISLAVA/VIENNA, April 5, (WEBNOVINY) — Slovak Economy Minister Juraj Miskov (SaS) does not like the way Austria wants to open its labor market to Slovak laborers. At a meeting on Monday with his Austrian counterpart Reinhold Mitterlehner the Slovak minister spoke about Slovakia’s concerns over Austria’s implementation of the EU directive on free movement of labor in the European Union. Miskov sees the biggest problem in extremely high fines for employers, which might even liquidate them and inappropriate red tape for businessmen, which Austria is implementing based on the law on protection of its labor market.
Miskov expects that the European Union will in all probability perceive the Austrian law as the country’s reluctance to be part of the joint efforts of EU members to create a single labor market. Mitterlehner however argued that his country only wants to protect itself from wage dumping by Slovakia. However, minister Miskov perceives this step as discrimination against inhabitants of other EU countries, informed the Slovak Economy Ministry.
Mitterlehner thinks that these opinion differences should be ironed out on a bilateral basis. ”This is not a conflict between Austria and Slovakia. Austria has endorsed a law, which limits all businessmen across the whole union. I consider this to be a dangerous precedent. I do not perceive it as a conflict between Slovakia and Austria but as Austria’s abandoning a joint goal of the EU, in which our countries are full-fledged members,” underscored Miskov. Miskov proposed closer cooperation to Mitterlehner in removing mutual administrative barriers to free enterprise and offered a creation of a working group to the Austrian side, which would help remove these obstacles in mutual economic cooperation. The meeting lasted two hours but it failed to bring any concrete conclusions, commented the Slovak ministry.
After using the longest possible transition period of seven years, Austria and Germany are „opening“ their labor markets to seven new European Union members from the former communist block as of May 1. According to statistical data, sixty percent of firms on the Austrian side are interested in hiring employees from these countries, half are interested in Slovaks. Slovak businesses believe that the opening of these markets will help boost employment in Slovakia.
SITA