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Planned amendment to the EU Buildings Directive contains unacceptable minimum requirements, but also an unattainable schedule in connection with the overall energy efficiency of buildings.
Vienna (OTS) – The recently assessed draft, which provides for numerous disproportionate tightening of the EU Building Directive, is causing enormous uncertainty among house and apartment owners. Around 40 million buildings within the EU would be affected by these coercive measures hostile to property.
ÖHGB President RA Dr. Martin Prunbauer warns urgently of the devastating effects of such an implementation in Austria. 50 percent of Austrians live in property. The measures mainly affect small and medium-sized owners, who would be formally forced out of property by unreasonably short deadlines and anti-property measures. Prunbauer specifies: “This is about families who have often bought property with the help of third-party financing and can expect a minimum of stable framework conditions for their building. Many older people would also be forced to part with their property because it becomes unaffordable. Often they don’t even get a loan to make the apartment barrier-free.
Against the background of having previously advised people to invest in their own four walls in order to be spared major cost burdens in old age, this EU project is simply audacious in Prunbauer’s view. The question inevitably arises: “Where is the legal security?”
His appeal to the federal government to speak out in the strongest possible terms against such unrealistic actions from the EU energy ivory tower: “You cannot lump all houses in Europe together. A Spanish row house settlement cannot be compared with a listed Wilhelminian style house in the center of Vienna, ”says Prunbauer, explaining his concerns. In many cases, not only is there a lack of funds, but real alternatives for the various measures. The thermal renovation of an Art Nouveau house with a structured facade, the installation of a heat pump in an old house, the installation of a pellet heating system in a town house, the connection to district heating are often not only associated with technical and financial hurdles, but simply impossible. The legislature cannot seriously decree renovation through demolition.
The fact that, according to the OECD, Austrian tenancy law is one of the most strictly regulated tenancy law laws in the world puts the EU’s project into perspective. Anyone who, as a landlord, is classified under the regulated tenancy law with their apartment or house, cannot possibly raise the financial means for such measures. But even those who use their property themselves are overwhelmed with these unrealistic projects. Prunbauer points out: “Rush and haste, especially in the current period, would cause chaotic conditions. If the funding were actually as generous as is always claimed, then incentives and voluntariness would have to suffice. ”
Hostility to property is hostility to the economy – a sad development for the EU.
More about the ÖHGB
The Austrian House and Landowners Association (ÖHGB, www.oehgb.at) is the largest voluntary interest group for Austrian house, land and apartment owners.
The main task of the Austrian Commercial Code (ÖHGB) is to protect and promote private property and to protect the common interests of private property owners. The approximately 30,000 members are divided between the nine regional associations, which provide their members with well-founded legal, tax, insurance, construction and financing advice and other extensive information and services. In addition, the ÖHGB and its regional associations pursue an active professional policy in the interests of the members in representing interests at all levels.
Inquiries & contact:
Austrian House and Landowners Association
Dr. Marie-Theres Ehrendorff
Press officer
Tel.: +43 676 3239 645
marie-theres.ehrendorff@oehgb.at
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