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TOPIC: austria

Living Abroad

The (Un)Friendliest Countries For Expats in 2023

Mexico is the most welcoming destination for expats, Kuwait the least, according to an Expat Insider survey.

In its 10th year, the annual Expat Insider survey by global expat network InterNations shines a light on the countries that make settling in easy — and those that don’t.

A warm welcome in Mexico

For the fifth year in a row, Mexico ranks 1st in the Ease of Settling In Index.

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Inside ​The Last Penicillin Factory In The West​

There are currently supply bottlenecks for around 500 medicines, including the antibiotic penicillin. Every second box of the active ingredient in Europe comes directly or indirectly from one place: a factory in the Tyrolean town of Kundl, Austria. Die Welttakes a look at the factory and what's causing the supply problems.

KUNDL — Stephanie Jedner is in a white protective suit, surveying production facilities the size of trucks. She walks past one of the giant tanks at the penicillin plant in the Austrian village of Kundl in Tyrol. "This fermentor has a capacity of 200,000 liters," says Jedner, who heads the plant's active ingredient production.

Everything at the Austrian production site of the Swiss pharmaceutical company Sandoz seems to be XXL-sized. In the plants around Jedner, a bacterial culture is grown using sugar, water and various nutrient solutions, from which the antibiotic penicillin is ultimately extracted. Up to 200,000 metric tons of this fermented slurry are produced at the plant each year. This is equivalent to 20 times the weight of the Eiffel Tower in Paris.

But Jedner's problems are also XXL in scale. The costs of cooking this huge soup have increased. Massively, in fact. The price of sugar has risen sharply since the outbreak of the Ukraine war, and the increase in energy prices is even more serious.

For the plant, which consumes as much energy as the city of Innsbruck, Austria, this is becoming a geographic disadvantage, with consequences for Europe as a whole: the Kundl plant is the last full-scale penicillin factory in the Western world.

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Why More Countries Are Banning Foreigners From Buying Real Estate

Canada has become the most recent country to impose restrictions on non-residents buying real estate, arguing that wealthy investors from other countries are pricing out would-be local homeowners. But is singling out foreigners the best way to face a troubled housing market?

PARIS — It’s easy to forget that soon after the outbreak of COVID-19, many real estate experts were forecasting that housing prices could face a once-in-generation drop. The logic was that a shrinking pandemic economy would combine with people moving out of cities to push costs down in a lasting way.

Ultimately, in most places, the opposite has happened. Home prices in the U.S., Canada, Britain, Germany, Australia and New Zealand rose between 25% and 50% since the outbreak of COVID-19.

This explosion was driven by a number of factors, including low interest rates, supply chain issues in construction and shortages in available properties caused in part by investors buying up large swathes of housing stock.

Yet some see another culprit deserving of particular attention: foreign buyers.

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Putin Reacts To Finland And Sweden, Marcos Sworn In, Record Bangladesh Flood

👋 Zdravo!*

Welcome to Thursday, where Putin plays good-cop/bad-cop with NATO, dictator Marcos’ son is sworn in as Philippines president and a rare portrait by Francis Bacon goes under the hammer. We also look at anti-abortion movements around the world celebrating — and mobilizing — following the historic Supreme Court ruling overturning Roe v. Wade.

[*Slovenian]

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Geopolitics
Anna Schneider

Neutrality Is Not An Option! Austria Must Follow Finland And Sweden Into NATO

While Sweden and Finland are fast-tracking NATO applications, the writer's homeland of Austria continues to cling to longstanding "neutrality" status, sleepwalking through the Russian invasion of Ukraine. The government has the polls on their side. But in reality, it's not our neutrality that protects us.

-OpEd-

Growing up in Austria, there's one word we seem to learn to say faster than “mama.” That word is: “neutrality.”

Stay up-to-date with the latest on the Russia-Ukraine war, with our exclusive international coverage.

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It's a status that apparently we all say we want – just look at recent statements by Austrian Defense Minister Klaudia Tanner: Neutrality is “in the heart of the Austrians,” she said, making it clear once again that this matter is not up for discussion.

For Austrian Chancellor Karl Nehammer, the matter was also always (and forever) clear: “Austria was neutral, Austria is neutral, and Austria will remain neutral,” he said, shortly before he tried to talk Putin to persuade him to find his conscience in Moscow. Putin remained unimpressed, and so were the Austrians.

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Geopolitics
Stefan Schocher

Sebastian Kurz: Victim Of Pandemic, And His Own Ego

The rise and fall of 35-year-old Sebastian Kurz was breathtaking in any context. Yet the resignation of the Austrian chancellor offers unique insights into a political scenario that was very much of our COVID times.

VIENNA — Sebastian Kurz is used to being popular. When he was re-elected as Federal Chairman of his party's youth organization in 2012, he received 100% of the votes. And that was exactly the bar against which he, along with all those who basked in his glow, have measured success in the decade since.

Kurz won 99.4% of the votes at the conservative ÖVP party congress this past August. Such a phenomenon might be common in authoritarian regimes, but is rare in a European democracy.

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Geopolitics
Klaus Geiger

Germany Weighs Coalition Of Conservatives And Greens

Austria's conservative-green coalition, though currently facing a crisis linked to corruption allegations, has been cited as a possible model for Germany's current post-election talks to form a new government. Could there be a logic to pairing the center-right CDU and the Greens in Berlin?

-Analysis-

BERLIN — It was late September, 2019. Austria's elections had just taken place and the political parties, which had attacked each other throughout their campaigns, suddenly started talking, sounding each other out about joining forces. Three months later, on New Year's Day, a coalition government was formed, an alliance between the Austrian People's Party and the Greens.

Before the elections, the Greens' left-wing base was adamant they would never sell their soul to the devil by forming a coalition with their arch-enemy Sebastian Kurz, the man who had previously governed alongside the right-wing nationalist Freedom Party of Austria.

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Economy
Tobias Kaiser, Virginia Kirst, Martina Meister

European Debt? The First Question For Merkel's Successor

Across southern Europe, all eyes are on the German elections, as they hope a change of government might bring about reforms to the EU Stability Pact.

-Analysis-

BERLIN — Finance Minister Olaf Scholz (SPD) is the front-runner, according to recent polls, to become Germany's next chancellor. Little wonder then that he's attracting attention not just within the country, but from neighbors across Europe who are watching and listening to his every word.

That was certainly the case this past weekend in Brdo, Slovenia, where the minister met with his European counterparts. And of particular interest for those in attendance is where Scholz stands on the issue of debt-rule reform for the eurozone, a subject that is expected to be hotly debated among EU members in the coming months.

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Geopolitics
Klaus Geiger

Austria, A Laboratory For Hard-Line Policies On Islam

Heated debate over an 'Islam Map' is drawing new attention to the center-right government's aggressive policy, which some in Germany now see as a model.

VIENNA — The colorfully playful facade of the Hundertwasser Museum is hard to miss. Instead, just around the corner in Vienna's Weißgerberviertel neighborhood is another building that you might never notice. Behind the gray door of the house is the Tuna Mosque. It is one of hundreds of small, inconspicuous mosques, as they tend to be in Austria, similar to those in Germany. Often, only members know where they are, and what is preached there.

The mosque in Vienna's Weißgerberviertel is one of more than 600 points on an online map that has recently gotten lots of attention in Austria. The government of Chancellor Sebastian Kurz has presented an "Islam map" that should give an overview of as many of the country's Muslim institutions as possible.

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BBC
Bertrand Hauger

Austrian Man Makes Case For Lower Fine After “Deliberately” Farting At Police

In Austria, they call it Darmwind — literally "bowel wind."

In June 2020, a man was fined 500 euros for intentionally letting one such Darwmind go at police officers approaching him for an identity check as he sat on a bench in a Viennese park. The Vienna Regional Administrative Court has now reduced the fine to 100 euros.

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Countries
Henryk M. Broder

Alone (Not) Among People: Vienna's Coffee Houses Lost To Covid

They haven't actually gone anywhere. But because of the pandemic, the city's celebrated cafés are off limits — and sorely missed.

VIENNA — In 1964, Viennese cabaret artist Georg Kreisler sang about a fantasy of "Vienna without the Viennese": How beautiful Vienna would be without the Viennese! / As beautiful as a sleeping woman. / The park would be greener, / and the Donau so blue.

That was a long time ago — more than 50 years, about two generations. Unlike in Kreisler's imaginary version, Vienna is now more full of Viennese people than ever. But it is as beautiful as a sleeping woman, and that's because of a catastrophe that no one saw coming: Vienna has lost its famous coffee houses.

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Countries
Christoph B. Schiltz

What We Learned From Austria's Far-Right Experiment

Chancellor Kurz deserves credit for trying to work with the populist FPÖ. But he's also right to end the relationship in the wake of the damning scandal

-OpEd-

BERLIN — "Enough is enough!" It was with those words — full of anger, bitterness and distance — that Austria's chancellor, Sebastian Kurz, severed the alliance between his conservative Austrian People's Party (ÖVP) and the far-right populist Freedom Party (FPÖ). This is the (provisional) end of political project.

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