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Vienna Energy Bonus 23: How to get your €200 payout

As of April 17th, Viennese citizens can apply for the "Energy Bonus 23". Certain households automatically receive the bonus, but others must apply for it either online or in person at an advice point.

Published: 17 April 2023 16:57 CEST

Vienna Energy Bonus 23: How to get your €200 payout

(Photo by Waldemar Brandt on Unsplash)

With energy prices still high, the Austrian government has been actively seeking measures to alleviate the impact of inflation on the population.

In Vienna, the capital city, the administration has announced the continuation of the “energy bonus” program, whereby most households will receive a payment of €200. According to government reports, 90 percent of homes that applied for and received the energy subsidy in 2022 will automatically receive the €200 in their accounts starting from April 17th.

READ ALSO: Tax cuts and bonus payments: Austria’s financial measures that will benefit people this year

However, in case of any changes in the household or if you haven’t yet applied for the 2022 bonus, you will receive a letter with a password to submit a new application online. This initiative aims to provide much-needed financial support to households during these challenging times of rising energy prices.

Notification letters were already sent out

According to the government, all Viennese households have been notified of the campaign in writing. Around 556,000 homes received a letter stating that the Vienna Energy Bonus 23 would be paid out to them automatically and without further application.

The first payments were already made on April 13th, and in the next few days, all 556,000 households should have received their bonus.

According to Stadt Wien, Viennese households to which the energy bonus is not automatically paid (around 94,000 homes) will also receive a letter from the City of Vienna in the next few days at the latest. This will affect mostly people who have recently moved to Vienna.

READ ALSO: Reader question: When will I get my 2023 Klimabonus payment in Austria?

In their letter, they will find an individual password they’ll need to use to apply online for the bonus. Anyone without an energy bonus letter can call the service hotline from mid-May at the earliest.

The application itself is not only possible online. Information and applications can also be requested and submitted in person or via the service phone (+43 1 4000-8040).

The deadline for applications is June 30th, 2023.

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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.

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