US embassy cable - 05VIENNA3026

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