The VP parliamentary group is contrite after a vote in the National Council, which is now leading to a fuss.
The chronology: On September 12th, in addition to the pension increase in 2025, a large package of laws will pass the budget committee. This includes the amendment to the civil service law, which comes from the ministry of Vice Chancellor and Civil Service Minister Werner Kogler. In addition to better pay for nursing staff in prisons and the army, the VP, Greens and SP voted for easier access for career changers into the teaching profession. Some other regulations have also been adapted, for example, public sector employees will in future be able to accompany their minor child to inpatient rehabilitation. And – as can be read in parliamentary correspondence – the Equal Treatment Act takes into account that discrimination can occur not only against women and men, but also against people who do not feel they belong to any gender (non-binary).
The VP club leadership claims to have only seen this passage immediately before the vote on Wednesday in the National Council. Negotiator, VP MP Romana Deckenbauer, said in the National Council plenary session that they did not support the point, but had agreed to it in order not to let the package as a whole fail. On Thursday, VP constitutional spokesman Wolfgang Gerstl said: “It just happened to us. We saw it too late.”
The VP club did not want to say anything on Friday. The party said that the mistake would be corrected in the constitutive session of the new National Council. They remained silent on how exactly this would work. They were convinced that they could win enough votes for it.
The SP, which was on board for the first vote, is to be won over to the party. In response to an OÖN query, party chairman Philipp Kucher said that other problems are currently being seen in light of the flooding. The Neos could be won over, says MP Karin Doppelbauer. She was present at the committee meeting as her party’s budget spokesperson and says that the passage was not discussed in the committee. “But often legislation that simply does not belong in the budget committee is put there because it meets the most often.” In her opinion, this issue would have been better placed in the social committee.
Dagmar Belakovitsch, deputy FP parliamentary group leader, denounced on Friday that the passage amounts to the abolition of biological sexes. She says that the ÖVP had spoken of a “compromise” in the debate in the plenary session, and only the next day did ÖVP constitutional spokesman Wolfgang Gerstl speak of a “mistake” that they wanted to “repair” in the constituent session. Belakovitsch said that the amendment could not be repaired in the constituent session; at best a new initiative proposal could be passed, which would then go to the relevant committee. She called on the ÖVP to jointly block the amendment in the Federal Council.
The Greens did not want to comment on the ÖVP’s change of heart. However, they emphasized that the new regulation goes back to a ruling by the Constitutional Court in 2018 and takes this into account.
