Being assigned as the next functionary, Glawischnig-Piesczek gets her foot in the door of Novomatic

Defending her former party’s official standing on gambling, Eva Glawischnig-Piesczek has begun to work as the new functionary of Novomatic, an international gambling company. On Friday, the preceding leader of the Austrian Green Party made it loud and clear about she being assigned a new job at the eminent gambling firm, irrespective of the party’s staunch anti-gambling platform.

As commented by Die Presse, Eva Glawischnig-Piesczek’s about-turn was called “the most spectacular in recent political and economic history” which has prompted widespread comment in other media outlets.

Glawischnig-Piesczek had been in the forefront of  the party from 2008 to 2017 and was determined  to back-up anti-gambling measures such as the city of Vienna’s 2015 ban on slot machines, with the exception of those in casinos.

In view of this, going forward, Novomatic’s corporate responsibility and sustainability efforts will rest on he Eva Glawischnig-Piesczek’s shoulder.

In a statement announcing the appointment, Novomatic CEO Harald Neumann said, although Glawischnig-Piesczek had clashed with the company in the past, recently she had “got to know Novomatic better and we saw that for the most part, our views were the same”.

Glawischnig-Piesczek herself said she would not lose her “critical spirit” at the company but that it wasn’t possible to “get rid of gambling just by banning it”.

Many of her former colleagues in the Green Party took to social media to express their outrage and disappointment at her decision.

It comes at a particularly embarrassing moment for the party, still seeking to recover after losing all its MPs in last year’s national elections and facing a similar fate in a regional poll on Sunday in Glawischnig-Piesczek’s home state of Carinthia.

With a turnover of 2.6 billion euros (RM12.6 billion) in 2016, Novomatic is one of the world’s biggest gambling technology companies with operations in dozens of countries worldwide.