Austria Plans to Amend General Settlement Fund

UNCLAS VIENNA 003026 SIPDIS STATE FOR EUR/OHI AND EUR/AGS E.O. 12958: N/A TAGS: KNAR PHUM PGOV AU SUBJECT: Austria Plans to Amend General Settlement Fund Law ¶1. MFA's International Law Division shared with us a draft amendment to the General Settlement Fund (GSF) Law. The purpose is to facilitate early payments by the GSF to Holocaust victims as soon as legal peace exists. It also would extend the filing period for the Arbitration Panel on in-rem restitution from end of 2004 to end of 2006. All five parties represented in parliament unanimously submitted the bill to the plenary on July 7. The constitutional committee will take up action next, with final passage expected in September or October. The GSF amendment is part of a legislative package; two other bills concern the establishment of a Scholarship Fund and a Future Fund to distribute leftover money from the Reconciliation Fund. ¶2. Parliamentary President (and ex-officio GSF Chairman) Andreas Khol has stressed that he hopes to issue advance payments to applicants whose claims have already been processed by the GSF (roughly 8,000 out of nearly 20,000 total) by the end of 2005, assuming legal peace exists. An appendix stipulates a minimum of USD 500 for these advance payments. Further, the bill eliminates the stipulation that, in the equity-based process, payments would go to households, and instead provides for payments to individuals. The GoA argues that payments to households have proven impractical, leading to complications in the equity-based process. In many cases, a "household" is composed of people living in different parts of the world who filed applications independently. BROWN