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The service sector in the municipalities close to the Austrian border is threatened with collapse. Despite the loosening at the Orbán border, Austrian guests are not at risk of crossing the border, he writes in a field report in the Austrian daily Der Standard.
The border closure has brought the service sector of the Hungarian settlements near the Austrian border to the brink of collapse, writes the Austrian daily Der Standard. According to his report, the service center next to the Sopron stadium is congested by emptiness: hairdressers, beauty salons and nail studios are sadly next to the workers and waiting for the kuncsafts who do not come, the newspaper shows.
According to the article, Hungarian experts also emphasize that the current high number of infections is mainly due to the fact that Hungarians had been celebrating and celebrating weddings since the beginning of July without proper precautions, and the beaches of Lake Balaton were crowded. At the same time, the right-wing populist Viktor Orbán, who showed authoritarian tendencies, wanted to show determination when seeing the increase in infections, and therefore ordered the closure of the borders so that the “virus could be introduced from abroad” (the markers they are not accidental.
There are relatively few exceptions to the border blockade, in principle, travelers can cross the border without being allowed to quarantine, but in no way does this category belong to an Austrian who wants to go shopping or move to Sopron or another nearby Hungarian city to some service.
It was really KO for us now: the newspaper quotes one of the hairdressers. They survived the spring shutdown anyway, but then the difference was that they closed the borders across Europe. After the reopening, the traffic took a while to increase, and by August they were already there believing that it would continue as before. They rent the business premises, so their fixed costs are retained, only kuncsafts do not come, and the others are in this situation, and those small businesses do not receive any state support.
Sometimes a car with an Austrian license plate appears in town. This may be a consequence, according to the article, that the local government dominated by Fidesz has managed to put enough pressure on decision makers. Austrians can therefore cross the Sopron-Klingelbach border crossing on the condition that they return to Austria within 24 hours and do not leave the 30-kilometer border area. Many shopping tourists are said to take advantage of the invented arrangement for travelers.
The Iron Curtain has been collapsing for 31 years, Hungary has been a member of the EU for 16 years and part of the Schengen area for 13 years. Meanwhile, border controls between the two countries were lifted. Therefore, it is not surprising that the Sopron region is socially and economically closely intertwined with Burgenland and the more remote area of Vienna. Not only do Austrians cross the border as clients, but Hungarians also come to Austria to work in abundance.
According to the newspaper, many Hungarians lost their jobs in Austria anyway due to the coronavirus situation. As a result, the purchasing power of Hungarians living locally also declined, further complicating the situation for service providers and retailers in the region.
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