Stoisits: Parking space trouble for horse-drawn carriages in Vienna

Viennese horse-drawn carriage businesses see their traditional rides around the city centre old town as being in danger and are complaining of an extreme shortage of carriage stands in the first district of Vienna. Public authorities are confronted with almost two hundred coaches operated by approximately thirty private businesses and the difficult task of justly dividing up fifty-eight available stand places among the competing horse-carriage companies.

A group of one-man-one-carriage businesses feel discriminated against by a regulation in force since 1 January 2012, basically accusing it of threatening the survival of small horse-cab companies. The City of Vienna argues that the new law was passed in order to regulate the market and to ensure quality standards for customers as well as for the key players – the horses. The municipal authorities and the Chamber of Commerce strongly deny all accusations that the new regulation favours companies with more than one carriage and call it a fair solution, pointing out the relative equality for both small and large companies.

In the studio, Ombudswoman Terezija Stoisits and three representatives of one-man carriage businesses discussed Viennese “horse-drawn carriage policy”, together with Leopold Bubak from the Municipality of Vienna and Reinhard Fischer representing the Austrian Chamber of Commerce.

Follow up: Complications for high-school teachers

In January the “Bürgeranwalt” ("Advocate for the People") reported on the case of a young high-school teacher at a school in Bruck/Mur in Styria, who graduated from university with a teaching degree for secondary schools in French as well as in psychology, philosophy and pedagogy. She also got a degree in art at the PÄDAK teaching college in Graz, but is only allowed to teach this subject in lower grade classes, although her school would require her to teach in senior classes as well.

Getting the necessary further qualification that would entitle her to teach art in senior classes in secondary school turned out to be far more complicated than it should be for a secondary teacher already qualified in different subject, as she would now have to take a further university degree, although she already holds an equivalent college degree.

Ombudswoman Stoisits called for a reduction in the unnecessary legal barriers imposed on motivated young teachers and the reintroduction of supplementary courses enabling them to teach additional subjects at high schools. The Ministry of Education representative, Dr. Faulhammer, responded by explaining that universities and colleges had recently been given the authority to decide themselves on qualification levels and the recognition of different (parts or modules of) graduate studies as qualifications for teaching at secondary schools. He also promised to officially inform universities and colleges of this new development, which actually happened immediately after the broadcast –now it’s up to the universities to take action.