A €10,000 (£8,420) grant scheme for restaurants that serve traditional Austrian food has started to take effect amid claims it is “discriminatory”.

The state government of the Lower Austria region announced the €4m (£3.37m) scheme, nicknamed the “schnitzel bonus”, last October – and the grants are now being distributed.

So far, 20 restaurants have reportedly received the bonus.

Restaurants that serve other traditional Austrian dishes including roast pork lung and boiled beef are also entitled to apply for the subsidy.

It was introduced to promote regional and traditional cuisine.

However, the scheme has been criticised as “discriminatory”.

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Austrian newspaper Kronen Zeitung last year quoted Robert Seeber, chief spokesman for the country’s chamber of commerce for tourism and leisure, as saying the scheme is “problematic” because “it is one-dimensional and discriminatory towards other businesses”.

He suggested a shortlist of “five or six traditional dishes” – and for the subsidy to be extended to include “ethnic restaurants” such as Italian, Greek, Indian and Turkish food outlets that add these to their menus.

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When the scheme was first announced, Austria’s national broadcaster ORF reported the governor of Lower Austria Johanna Mikl-Leitner as saying: “Sausage and kebab stands are excluded here.

“We don’t want the population – if I can put it in an exaggerated way – to be able to look at the last schnitzel in a museum at some point.”

One in three pubs in Lower Austria have closed since 2000, she added.

The region’s deputy governor Udo Landbauer said it was the job of state politics to maintain and promote the “cultural heritage of the inn”.

“We stand by local gastronomy, we stand by our local innkeepers,” he said.

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