2023-07-15 03:12:38
Green club chairwoman Sigrid Maurer wants to continue government cooperation with the ÖVP in the federal government to the end. “This coalition is not over,” she said in the summer interview with APA. Despite all the differences, the balance of the past few years speaks for itself. The Greens would like to govern following the National Council elections, with all options, but “never with the Liberals”. Maurer vehemently criticized the turquoise-blue coalitions in the countries.
“In these three and a half years, we have made more progress for climate protection than has happened in the three decades before,” emphasized Maurer. She also referred to climate tickets, plastic deposits, social benefit valorization or nursing grants, “now there is still a major health care reform ahead”. She is very confident regarding the open Freedom of Information Act, because ÖVP Constitutional Minister Karoline Edtstadler “still has her homework to finish”. One should not forget that this is the last piece of the puzzle in a huge anti-corruption package that has already been decided. They want to continue fighting for other things, including the climate protection law.
“We Greens have a right to shape the future,” she underscored. Accordingly, the Greens want to have a say in government once more following the next election. “We are absolutely convinced that we have to keep up the pace in combating the climate crisis in order to be able to hand over a planet that is habitable to future generations,” she said. “No other party is credible here.” Maurer wants to address the associated fears directly. Her credo: “In order to preserve our country and our quality of life, we have to change.”
In which constellations that will be possible, “it will be decided by the election result and not by me”. Unfortunately, it can be observed that right-wing conservative to right-wing extremist politicians are coming to power in some European countries. Their course, instead of relying on rushed solutions and ultimately getting the worst out of people, is condemned in the strongest possible terms. “It is the task of democratic parties to gather together and to take a clear line here,” she said. “Logically, the Greens would never coalition with the Freedom Party.” How the ÖVP sees it is the “crucial question”.
“Of course it worries me when a party that once supported the state tilts in this direction. We oppose it,” she said, for example in the direction of the People’s Party in Lower Austria and its government program with the FPÖ under Udo Landbauer. ÖVP governor Johanna Mikl-Leitner has said goodbye to self-marketing as the country’s mother and is now focusing on polarization and differentiation: “Johanna Mikl-Leitner has taken herself out of the game a bit. In any case, what seriousness and actual politics for the width regards.”
She saw the demarcation made by Mikl-Leitner as a “normal-thinking middle class” as problematic. “Who are the non-normal ones? Is it the gay couple with a child?” she asked. Are immigrants from Ukraine, for example, not normal or people with disabilities? “Politics must always take care of everyone,” emphasized the club chairwoman: “And the center is where the people are – in all their diversity and all their differences.” The green approach is to put what we have in common ahead of what divides us.
Maurer does not want to worry too much that turquoise-blue governments might roll back achievements in climate protection, for example, and that constitutional majorities might move out of reach for further corresponding projects following the next election. “I am absolutely not a supporter of depression and pessimism,” emphasized the club’s chairwoman. So far, the coalition has been very productive in the legislative output under the most difficult framework conditions – three different federal chancellors, a pandemic, the inflation crisis or Russia’s war of aggression in Ukraine.
“Things are shifting,” Maurer referred to the gas crisis and the forced phase-out of fossil fuels: “What the Greens have been preaching for years or decades, and for which people were sometimes ridiculed, is now a matter of state.”
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