North Macedonia: Vienna’s ambassador lobbied for gambling in Skopje

The ambassador known as for exceptions for the Austrian corporations Novomatic and Casinos Austria in North Macedonia.

The Austrian Ambassador in North Macedonia, Georg Woutsas, has intervened in opposition to regulations on playing and towards expanded participant safety, which need to higher defend children and younger humans in the south-japanese European u . S . A .. In a letter to the Prime Minister of North Macedonia, approximately the “Zackzack” and the Ö1-Morgenjournal reported, in February Woutsas called for exceptions for Austrian groups, specifically Casinos Austria and Novomatic.

“These organizations – Casinos Austria and Novomatic – guarantee me that they offer the highest standard of player safety, as is normal in Austria and the EU,” Woutsas wrote in a February letter sent to North Macedonia’s Prime Minister Dimitar Kovačevski , and different parliamentarians become addressed. In the letter, Woutsas calls for overseas organizations to be exempted from the restrictions. “I might be very obliged if the government would withdraw the planned adjustments or exempt overseas investments,” it stated.

North Macedonia authorities wants to restrict playing

In North Macedonia, the authorities wants to restriction playing and increase player protection. The government in Skopje is making plans a safety quarter of 500 meters around colleges. No arcades or betting stores have to be allowed in this area. The deliberate tightening has been caught in the North Macedonian parliament for months.

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Woutsas known as for exemptions for sites operated with overseas capital. “For casinos, a ban area of 500 m around faculties: exception for these locations, at the least insofar as they are operated with overseas capital, now and in the future,” says the letter, with the logo of the Austrian embassy inside the letterhead. In the event of violations, Woutsas threatened “major damage to North Macedonia as a commercial enterprise location” and noted “claims for damages amounting to loads of tens of millions of euros”.

The Foreign Ministry distanced itself from Woutsas in a rationalization despatched out on Thursday. It changed into stated that the Austrian ambassador turned into distancing himself completely from the intervention tries. These had no longer been agreed with Vienna. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs additionally endorsed robust participant protection. Woutsas has already been warned that in his future role he's going to “no longer have any touch with North Macedonia or economic diplomacy”.

Woutsas was already in a clinch with the government

It isn't the first time that Woutsas has been at odds with the North Macedonian authorities over Austrian enterprise pursuits within the recent past. In a letter to the private tv station Telma TV Woutsas sharply criticized the judiciary at the stop of June because the rural business enterprise AMMA Hohenems turned into no longer able to collect debts of 4.Five million euros from two North Macedonian organizations.

Casinos Austria spokesman Patrick Minar emphasised within the Ö1lunch magazine, it was legitimate “to apply the diplomatic provider to represent the valid business pastimes of Austrian agencies abroad”. Contact was made with Woutsas due to the fact the proposed legislation could have jeopardized the complete enterprise model. Economic operation could not were feasible when the law came into pressure, said Minar. From Novomatic it became said in turn that the diplomatic service had never been encouraged.

Emil Brix, the director of the Diplomatic Academy in Viennasaid in Ö1-lunch journalthat lobbying “absolutely does not belong to the regions of obligation of an Austrian ambassador overseas”. Of course you need to work for Austrian organizations, however “only inside the framework of a constitutional device,” stated the lengthy-time diplomat, who labored as ambassador in London and Moscow, amongst other things. For Brix it's miles absolutely inexplicable that “as a minimum circuitously strain was tried to be exerted right here through detours, via (…) the rapprochement of North Macedonia with the EU”.

“Exceptional scandal”

Die Foreign coverage spokeswoman for the Greens, Ewa Ernst-Dziedzic, defined the incident in a printed as a “unique magnificence scandal”. “Such conduct by the best diplomatic representative of the Republic of Austria might anyways massively harm the recognition of our usa abroad,” said Ernst-Dziedzic. The mandatary emphasised that a parliamentary question to the Foreign Minister Alexander Schallenberg (ÖVP) to want to ask.

The head of the SPÖ-EU delegation, Andreas Schieder, took a comparable tack. The incident damages Austria’s function as a mediator inside the Western Balkans and weighs two times as heavily in “this crucial section of North Macedonia’s EU integration technique (…)”. “What reads like a threatening letter from the board of administrators are the phrases of Austria’s maximum representative in Skopje. Georg Woutsa’s letter could be tricky if he had been simply a playing lobbyist, after all he is severely intervening in opposition to a gambling safety sector around kindergartens and faculties,” stated Schieder.

“The fact that the Foreign Ministry is distancing itself from the Austrian ambassador’s attempts to intrude in North Macedonia isn't always sufficient, that’s now not the end of the story,” says Stephanie Krisper, NEOS spokeswoman for indoors affairs. The NEOS mandatarin demanded that the incident be clarified as fast as viable. “We call for complete clarification from the foreign minister. We need to realize whether the ambassador acted by myself and if no longer, on whose behalf he acted.”