Vienna Chamber PR spending rose fifteenfold under Ruck

Public relations spending at the Vienna Chamber of Commerce rose fifteenfold under former president Walter Ruck, an ORF investigation found. The chamber spent about 976,000 euros on PR, press and media work in 2024, after budgeting nearly 64,000 euros in 2015.

The chamber said it faced several crises from 2015, including the Covid pandemic, the war in Ukraine and a shortage of skilled workers. It said these increased the need to communicate members’ concerns and interests, leading it to hire external advisers.

Contracts obtained by ORF through a court case under Austria’s Freedom of Information Act show that PR adviser Rudolf Fußi received a monthly flat fee of 2,000 euros for weekend and public holiday availability under a 2017 agreement. The chamber said the service was regularly used and that a flat fee cost less than billing by the hour.

Fußi’s agency also provided personal advice to Ruck and the chamber’s management. The monthly fee for that package was most recently 15,394 euros.

A separate agreement covered advice from an agency associated with Wolfgang Rosam. The chamber sought to establish itself as a political agenda-setter and place its positions in Austrian media. The monthly fee for strategic advice on policy interests and topics was most recently 6,500 euros. The chamber said the two firms had different areas of focus. Rosam said he had advised the chamber for many years, including presidents Nettig and Jank before Ruck.

The Vienna branch of the Freedom Party of Austria called in August for a special audit of the chamber’s PR spending. Based on published contracts, it estimated the total value since 2019 at 18.579 million euros. The exact spending is difficult to establish because framework agreements were not always used in full and the published figures also include third-party costs, such as advertising and poster space.

Rosam’s agency agreements were renewed annually from 2015 to 2025. They were either awarded directly or the process received only one bid. The chamber did not answer questions about whether it sought competing bids or why the work was never put out to tender as a single package. It said the contracts had ended and that future work would be tendered on a project-by-project basis.