The Aus­tri­an Federal Government let the pet pro­ject of our for­mer vice- chan­cellor Pröll (not the one with the trade­mark hairstyle) fall asleep gent­ly — the reform of our infa­mous jung­le of grants, aiming at sim­pli­fi­ca­ti­on and trans­pa­ren­cy. That such a reform could save several bil­li­on (EUROs mind you) per year, accord­ing to the Federal Court of Audi­tors (for which I save far less skep­ti­cism than for most government insti­tu­ti­ons), making the cos­ts of res­cuing the Hypo Alpe Adria bank fade in com­pa­ri­son, is easy to get over in view of sta­te cof­fers being stuf­fed with taxes on labor inco­me (or have I misun­ders­tood something?).

Some con­sul­tants even make a living from shed­ding light into this jung­le. This inclu­des us. We see our­sel­ves a bit as Robin Hood of the tax­payer. If no tax reforms are on the agen­da, at least we can help retrie­ve a small part of the taxes paid.

And that leads me to my grant diary.

What hap­pens to my cli­ents and me is fun­ny from time to time, some­ti­mes incredi­ble, often important and in most cases use­ful. And so I thought to mys­elf — why not let the valued ​​visi­tors of our web­site bene­fit from the­se expe­ri­en­ces? The­re­fo­re I will cover the lucra­ti­ve and some­ti­mes bizar­re world of grants and sub­si­dies at irre­gu­lar inter­vals; a reclu­se of feu­da­lism in Aus­tria, an area whe­re the mot­to is: “even if you meet all the cri­te­ria, no rights to grants exist”. Are you rea­dy for some surprises?