Home / Locations / Austria / Vienna

Vienna

Austria

CMS Austria, founded in Vienna in 1970, looks back on 45 successful years. As our client, you benefit from our regional market expertise and industry knowledge regardless of whether you are looking to expand to CEE/SEE, Western Europe or even beyond, not only because we are among the largest law firms in Austria, but also because of our special hub position in Vienna and our collaboration with our locally rooted and internationally active CMS colleagues.

In Vienna, 75 lawyers are at your service to face the future together with you. Globalisation and ever-changing economic conditions continuously pose complex legal challenges to companies. Especially the jungle of regulations companies involved in cross-border business have to heed is rife with legal pitfalls. These are the exact legal challenges in which we specialise. Do not hesitate to contact us via our online contact form or by phone.

We see it as our job to guide you through diverse jurisdictions in a safe and business-oriented way. That’s why it almost goes without saying that we are always up to date regarding legislative changes in both the Austrian and international markets.

In our work, we focus on M&A, banking & finance, real estate, building law, labour law, tax law, energy law, IP and IT law, competition law and procurement law. What’s more, we also take care of the entire legal management of your projects, for instance in transactions.

more less

Directions

The CMS office is located very centrally at Gauermanngasse 2 in the first district of Vienna.

From the Vienna International Airport

The airport is located only about 20 kilometres from the Vienna city centre.

  • A taxi ride will take about 30 minutes and, depending on the taxi company, cost between 30 and 40 euros.
  • By bus: all three of the Vienna Airport Lines connect to all underground lines in Vienna and the train stations “Wien Westbahnhof” and “Wien Meidling”. Buses operate daily around the clock and take you to the city centre (get off at “Morzinplatz/Schwedenplatz”) in only 20 minutes. Take a taxi or the U4 underground line (green line) to reach the CMS office from there.
  • The City Airport Train CAT also takes you to the stop “Wien-Mitte” in only 20 minutes (11 euros for a one-way ticket). From there you can take a taxi or the U4 underground line (green line, get off at “Karlsplatz”) to reach the CMS office.

more less

Location

CMS Reich-Rohrwig Hainz
Rechtsanwälte GmbH
Gauermanngasse 2
1010 Vienna
Austria
CMS Vienna | Our attorneys-at-law
CMS Wien I Offene Stellen
CMS Reich-Rohrwig Hainz
About our law firm

Feed

16/10/2024
Career Calling 2024
Career Calling is the place to be when it comes to planning your career and joining the labour market. At this annual fair, our trainees and colleagues from the Human Resources department will be on hand to answer your questions.  More about Details on Career Calling.  
06/06/2024
JUS Success
 
13/05/2024
Grüne Transformation konkret: Rechtliche Wege für Energieprojekte und nachhaltige...
Teil 2 der Seminarreihe "Nachhaltige Infrastruktur, grüne Transformation und Stadtentwicklung für Städte und Gemeinden"
24/04/2024
Join Our Team – Arbeitsrecht & Personalaufnahme an Universitäten
Am 24.04.2024 findet unter dem Titel "Join our team" eine Tagung für Arbeitsrecht und Personalaufnahme an Universitäten am WU Campus in Wien statt. Pro­gramm­high­lights:   9.30 - 10.15 Uhr Grundfragen des Beru­fungs­ver­fahrens nach §§ 98, 99 UG Univ. Prof. Dr. Christoph Kietaibl10.15 - 10.25 Uhr Kommentar: Dr. Andrea Potz15.30 - 16.15 Uhr Ver­fahrens­recht und Rechtsschutz bei der Aufnahme von Uni­versität­sper­son­al Hon.-Prof. Dr. Christoph Wolf
21/03/2024
CMS Employment Snack | Arbeitsrecht und Datenschutz – eine Stan­dortbestim­mung
CMS Employment Snack
19/03/2024
STEP Lunch | Wie komme ich an mein Erbe?
STEP Lunch 
18/03/2024
Emerging Europe’s Energy Transition
CEE Legal Matters | 12 March 2024
15/03/2024
CMS advises Sfakianakis Group on the acquisition of Ajar Car Rental
Press release - 15 March 2024 CMS Austria has advised the Greek Sfakianakis Group on the acquisition of Ajar Car Rental GmbH from the Saudi Arabian Al Jomaih Group, providing comprehensive legal advice on the project. Ajar Car Rental GmbH is the master franchisee of Enterprise, National, and Alamo in Austria, serving rent-a-car customers across the country. During the acquisition, the CMS Austria team provided significant support and advice on all areas of the transaction, including due diligence, employment, regulatory compliance, intellectual property, banking and finance, data protection and competition. Alexander Rakosi (Partner, Corporate/M&A) led the CMS core transaction team, which further consisted of Christoph Birner (Associate, Corporate/M&A) and Thomas Liegl (Associate, Corporate/M&A). Alexander Rakosi comments: “We are very pleased to have successfully supported the Sfakianakis Group on its market entry into Austria and to have contributed to our client's continued growth in the automotive industry."The CMS due diligence team included Rebecca Herlitz (Associate, Corporate/M&A), Mariella Kapoun (Partner, Real Estate), Hans Lederer (Partner, Intellectual Property), Andreas Lichtenberger (At­tor­ney-at-Law, Data Protection), Caroline Pavitsits (Associate, Employment), Kai Ruckelshausen (Partner, Banking & Finance), Sheldon Sookdeo (Associate, Banking & Finance), Maximilian Uidl (Associate, Real Estate), Marlene Wim­mer-Nistel­ber­ger (Partner, Regulatory), Jens Winter (Partner, Employment) and Dieter Zandler (Partner, Competition), as well as legal trainees Roman Namestek, Ferdinand Sima and Mattias Torggler. PHH Rechtsanwälte, led by Rainer Kaspar and Philip Rosenauer, provided legal support to Al Jomaih. About Sfakianakis Group Founded in 1958, Sfakianakis Group is one of the leading diversified business groups in Greece, with a core focus on the Automotive, Industrial and Consumer Retail sectors. Headquartered in Athens, Greece, the Group is 100% family owned and employs over 1,500 individuals across 14 countries in Europe. Within the Automotive sector, the Group operates one of the largest automotive retail businesses in the region, the distribution businesses of BYD and Suzuki, a leading long-term leasing business (Executive Lease), and a rapidly growing Rent-A-Car business as the Master Franchisee of En­ter­prise-Na­tion­al-Alamo in 14 countries.
15/03/2024
CMS Expert Guide on Real Estate Data Centre Consenting
Welcome to CMS’ online guide tool for data centre legal consenting considerations. Please use the tool to compare legal consenting considerations for data centre development and investment across key...
Comparable
15/03/2024
CMS Expert Guide to real estate finance law
A clear understanding of the security available is fundamental for lenders and borrowers. To assist, CMS has launched an interactive International Guide to Real Estate Finance. This provides a clear and...
13/03/2024
Tax: A CEE Level of Intricacy
CEE Legal Matters | 12 March 2024
13/03/2024
General purpose AI models and measures in support of innovation
General purpose AI models (Currently Title VIIIA, Art. 52a-52e)The AI Act is founded on a risk based approach. This regulation, intended to be durable, initially wasn’t associated to the characteristics of any particular model or system, but to the risk associated with its intended use. This was the approach when the proposal of the AI Act was drafted and adopted by the European Commission on 22 April, 2021, when the proposal was discussed at the  Council of the European Union on 6 December, 2022. However, after the great global and historical success of generative AI tools in the months following the Commission’s proposal, the idea of regulating AI focusing only on its intended use seemed then insufficient. Then, in the 14 June 2023 draft, the concept of “foundation models” (much broader than generative AI) was introduced with associated regulation. During the negotiations in December 2023, some additional proposals were introduced regarding “very capable foundation models” and “general purpose AI systems built on foundation models and used at scale”. In the final version of the AI Act, there is no reference to “foundation models”, and instead the concept of “general purpose AI models and systems” was adopted. General Purpose AI models (Arts. 52a to 52e) are distinguished from general purpose AI systems (Arts. 28 and 63a). The General Purpose AI systems are based on General Purpose AI models: “when a general purpose AI model is integrated into or forms part of an AI system, this system should be considered a general purpose AI system” if it has the capability to serve a variety of purposes (Recital 60d). And, of course, General Purpose AI models are the result of the operation of AI systems that created them.“General purpose AI model” is defined in Article 3.44b as “an AI model (…) that displays significant generality and is capable to competently perform a wide range of distinct tasks regardless of the way the model is placed on the market and that can be integrated into a variety of downstream systems or applications”. The definition lacks quality (a model is “general purpose” if it “displays gen­er­al­ity”1Re­cit­al 60b contributes to clarify the concept saying that “generality” means the use of at least a billion of parameters, when the training of the model uses “a large amount of data using self-supervision at scale”. footnote) and has a remarkable capacity for expansion. Large generative AI models are an example of General Purpose AI models (Recital 60c). The obligations imposed to providers of General Purpose AI models are limited, provided that they don’t have systemic risk. Such obligations include (Art. 52c) (i) to draw up and keep up-to-date technical documentation (as described in Annex IXa) available to the national competent authorities, as well as to providers of AI systems who intend to integrate the General Purpose AI system in their AI systems, and (ii) to take some measures in order to respect EU copyright legislation, namely to put in place a policy to identify reservations of rights and to make publicly available a sufficiently detailed summary about the content used. Furthermore, they should have an authorised representative in the EU (Art. 52ca). The most important obligations are imposed in Article 52d to providers of General Purpose AI models with systemic risk. The definition of AI models with systemic risk is established in Article 52a in too broad and unsatisfactory terms: “high impact capabilities”. Fortunately, there is a presumption in Article 52a.2 that helps: “when the cumulative amount of compute used for its training measured in floating point operations (FLOPs) is greater than 10^25”. The main additional obligations imposed to General Purpose AI models with systemic risks are (i) to perform model evaluation (including adversarial testing), (ii) to assess and mitigate systemic risks at EU level, (iii), to document and report serious incidents and corrective measures, and (iv) to ensure an adequate level of cybersecurity. Finally, an “AI system” is “an AI system which is based on a General Purpose AI model, that has the capacity to serve a variety of purposes” (Art. 3.44e). If General Purpose AI systems can be used directly by deployers for at least one purpose that is classified as high-risk (Art. 57a and Art. 63a), an evaluation of compliance will need to be done.