When You Seize An Opportunity

Every day there is a chance to try something new, to learn something, or to get involved. The reason why I am saying these words is that I decided to apply for a 3-month diploma seminar through the actions of Austria-Slovakia. It is a bilateral program to promote cooperation between Austria and Slovakia in higher education, science and research.

My name is Dominika Matušová. I am a student at the University of Žilina (Slovakia), Faculty of Operation and Economics of Transport and Communications, study program: Business Economics and Management. I will be taking my final examinations in just a few days. My internship (diploma seminar) started on the second of February, 2015, at the Institute for Export Management at WU Vienna University of Economics and Business. During the internship, I have dealt with tasks related to the topic of my diploma thesis entitled The Issue of Allocation of State Aid to Enterprises in the EU.

The allocation and granting the state aid is a complex issue. It is necessary to cooperate with different national and European institutions (mainly the European Commission). My research focused mainly on obtaining information for my diploma thesis. I visited different institutions, like the Vienna Business Agency and communicated with the Austrian Business Agency (ABA-Invest). At the Vienna Business Agency, I had an appointment with Ms. Dudu Gencel who provided me with information and also materials related to state aid. The faculty at the Institute for Export Management at WU were also willing to provide advice and opinions. All these elements (information, facts, opinions, advice, materials) combined together led to the right result. It is very difficult to find specific companies that have received state aid and to analyze and evaluate the specific situation of each company. For this reason, I changed my original plan and to some extent also the goal of my diploma thesis. I applied it to the general level, for example describing the process of granting the state aid in steps. An evaluation of the allocation of state aid in the Slovak Republic during the years 2000-2013 is a key part of the thesis. The benefit of my diploma thesis is that the results and suggestions obtained are of theoretical and practical use. The most important part of my diploma thesis is information on financial law and legislation from national (Slovakian and Austrian) and European documents. To fulfil the conditions for granting state aid it is also necessary to control it. The main goal will consist in comparing and defining common attributes of state aid in Austria and Slovakia.

New projects and issues

Finally, I would like to thank the following people: Prof. Dr. Reinhard Moser and Dr. Lotte Schatzlmaier, both from the Institute for Export Management at WU; Ms. Dudu Gencelfrom the Vienna Business Agency, and Dr. Doris Dobida, Director of Strategic Investment at ABA-Invest, for their information, advice, opinions and the professional approach they provided to me during my internship. At the same time, I thank my thesis supervisor Ing. Katarína Ivánková, PhD., from the University of Žilina; Ing. Peter Magvaši, CSc., former Minister of Economy of the Slovak Republic; Róbert Šimončič, CEO of the S A R I O – Slovak Investment and Trade Development Agency; Boris Škoda from the Department of Industrial Development and Investments, Section of Industry and Trade at the Ministry of Economy of the Slovak Republic, and Univ. prof. i. R. Dipl. Ing. Dr. Mikuláš Luptáčik, Dean of the Faculty of National Economy at the University of Economics in Bratislava.

I hope and believe that our cooperation will continue in the future by cooperating on new projects and issues. This internship has given me a lot of valuable experience which I will use both in my professional and personal life.

#study #research #internship