SHARE
COPY LINK
For members

VIENNA

How Vienna wants to restrict restaurants and events to vaccinated people only

Authorities in Vienna have put forward one of Europe's strictest set of rules for entering restaurants, bars, events and nightlife venues.

How Vienna wants to restrict restaurants and events to vaccinated people only
A sign from a bar in the US which only allows vaccinated customers. Vienna has drawn up a similar plan. MICHAEL CIAGLO / GETTY IMAGES NORTH AMERICA / GETTY IMAGES VIA AFP

The Vienna state government wants to tighten 3G rules so that only those who have been vaccinated may visit restaurants, attend large events or bars and nightlife venues. 

Under the change, Austria’s 3G rules – which allow for people who have tested negative, been fully vaccinated or contracted the virus in the previous six months – would be wound back to a 1G rule only for the vaccinated in most examples in Vienna. 

Vienna health chief Peter Hacker said unvaccinated people should be banned from sports and leisure facilities, with similar restrictions for bars, restaurants and nightclubs. 

READ MORE: Will Vienna restrict sports, leisure and gastronomy facilities to the vaccinated?

“There is no way of getting around the fact that only vaccinated people should be allowed in” Hacker said.

Hacker said Vienna would have no hesitation adopting different rules to the rest of the country as it had done before.

“If the number of infections increases, and they look likely to increase at the beginning of the school year, then, for example, unvaccinated teachers will teach with masks.”

“Better to make things vaccination only rather than have more closures” Hacker said.

Austria’s Health Minister Wolfgang Mückstein said the government was contemplating restricting events to vaccinated people, but said such a move wouldn’t come into effect before October.

“I believe that before an increasingly precarious epidemiological situation in autumn we have to talk about a 1G rule – and I can certainly imagine that in October,” Mückstein told ORF.

This represented a change from what the minister said on Sunday, where Mückstein said it was too early to consider further tightenings. 

Support for Vienna’s plan, although nationwide solution remains preferred option

Thomas Szekeres, President of the Medical Association, said the federal government should “absolutely support” Hacker’s plan.

Hacker also has won support from businesses in the hospitality and gastronomy sector, who have said they would welcome rules which restrict entry to the vaccinated.

Several prominent entrepreneurs in the Vienna bar and restaurant scene told Krone on Monday that they support Hacker’s efforts.

“Peter Hacker’s move is the right announcement that we need now,” said Martin Ho, who owns several bars and restaurants in the Austrian capital.

David Schober, who runs several bars in Vienna, said the proposals outlined by Hacker would prevent further lockdowns.

“The Viennese advance is going in the right direction, which will save us lockdowns.”

Thomas Figlmüller, who runs Vienna’s famous Figlmüller schnitzel restaurant, said the change would be a constructive step in returning to normal.

“Any clear legal requirement that increases the vaccination rate and thus accelerates the return to normal is to be welcomed.”

Vienna Chamber of Commerce chair Peter Dobcak said more needed to be done to inform people about the importance of vaccination, particularly the large immigrant community in Vienna. 

Dobcak said bringing in such a rule too early would have “dramatic consequences” for the hospitality sector in Vienna. 

Several other Austrian states have said they would welcome stricter rules for the unvaccinated, including Styria, Carinthia and Tyrol, however they said a national approach should be pursued.

“That is absolutely the right approach, but it only works if the federal government and the states agree on clear measures together,” said the Styrian health councilor Juliane Bogner-Strauss (ÖVP) on Sunday.

Her counterpart in Carinthia said stricter rules for the unvaccinated were “unavoidable”.

Member comments

Log in here to leave a comment.
Become a Member to leave a comment.

VIENNA

Could be wurst: Vienna sausage stands push for UN recognition

From top bankers and politicians to students and factory workers, Vienna's popular sausage stands heaving with bratwurst and meaty delicacies are a longstanding cultural legacy they hope to have recognised by UNESCO.

Could be wurst: Vienna sausage stands push for UN recognition

The owners of 15 stands in the Austrian capital have formed a lobbying group and applied last week to have the “Vienna sausage stand culture” inscribed as intangible cultural heritage by the UN agency.

“We want to create a kind of quality seal for Vienna sausage stands,” said 36-year-old Patrick Tondl, one of the association’s founders whose family owns Leo’s Wuerstelstand — Vienna’s oldest operating sausage stand.

“At the sausage stand, everyone is the same… No matter if you’re a top banker who earns hundreds of thousands of euros or if you have to scrape together the last euros to buy a sausage… You meet here, you can talk to everyone,” he adds.

High inflation driving consumers looking for affordable meals, plus a new wave of vendors with updated flavours, have helped keep the stands busy.

Tondl’s great-grandfather started their business in the late 1920s, pulling a cart behind him and selling sausages at night.

The family’s customers have included former chancellor Bruno Kreisky, recalls Vera Tondl, 67, who runs the shop together with her son Patrick.

Leo’s is one of about 180 sausage stands in Vienna today, out of a total of about 300 food stands, selling fast food at fixed locations and open until the early hours, according to the city’s economic chamber.

Whereas the number of stands has remained similar over the last decade, more than a third have changed from selling sausages to kebabs, pizza and noodles, a spokesman for the chamber told AFP.

‘Momentum’

But sausage stands have seen a “mini boom” in customer numbers recently, according to Patrick Tondl.

Many have been drawn back to the stands by high inflation, where a meal can be had for less than 10 euros ($11) with lower overheads than restaurants.

New stand operators have also brought a “bit of momentum”, said Tondl, bringing the likes of organic vegetarian sausages with kimchi.

Tourists are already drawn in droves.

“When you come to Austria, it’s what you want to try,” 28-year-old Australian tourist Sam Bowden told AFP.

The cultural legacy of Vienna’s sausages is far-reaching, including the use of the term “wiener” for sausages in the United States, which is believed to have derived from the German name for Vienna, Wien.

However Sebastian Hackenschmidt, who has published a photo book on the stands, said the legacy of the “Vienna phenomena” is more complex.

He says that for many in multicultural Vienna, the sausage stands hold little appeal — equally for the growing number of vegetarians — and their universal appeal is something of a “myth”.

“Vienna is a city in great flux… With the influx of people, cultural customs are also changing,” Hackenschmidt told AFP.

Some 40 percent of Vienna’s two million inhabitants were born outside the country, where the anti-immigrant far-right looks set to top September national polls for the first time.

SHOW COMMENTS