Schultz in an interview

“No taboos”, but the WKO boss doesn’t shake them

Martha Schultz is the interim head of the Chamber of Commerce. For how long? "At least until the reform process has started."(Bild: Mario Urbantschitsch)

Entrepreneurs and critics of the Chamber of Commerce are keeping a wary eye on Tyrolean tourism expert Martha Schultz. In an interview with the "Krone" newspaper, the new WKO boss talks about the chamber's biggest mistakes, her reform plans and timetable, the limits of her new power - and, for the first time, about her predecessor Harald Mahrer.

It's the weekend of the ski opening in Hochzillertal-Kaltenbach and Martha Schultz, the first woman to head the powerful but battered Chamber of Commerce in just a few days, is not in Vienna. "The start of the season is something special, a ritual. And we have good snow," she says in the "Krone" interview on the phone. On Thursday, the 62-year-old entrepreneur returned to her home and her business.

Behind her lie two intensive weeks full of crisis meetings, rumors and the involuntary departure of her predecessor, the dazzling ÖVP office collector Harald Mahrer. She has a mammoth task ahead of her: to steer the Chamber of Commerce, a rigid bureaucratic apparatus and the representative body for 580,000 companies, out of the self-inflicted crisis - and to fundamentally change it. 

"Krone": How is your contact with former President Harald Mahrer?