2023-08-04 06:25:52
According to Chancellor Karl Nehammer (ÖVP), the government plans to stick to the value of Statistics Austria – probably 9.7 percent – when it comes to pension increases. In contrast to previous years, you don’t want to add anything – it’s already “amounts in the billions,” said Nehammer in the APA summer talk. “There is no time pressure” for the EU’s top candidate, but he does criticize Othmar Karas. FPÖ leader Herbert Kickl is a “conspiracy theorist”.
The expected reference value for the adjustment of pensions, calculated according to the inflation rates of the past twelve months, is likely to be 9.7 percent. In recent years, the government has often decided on higher allowances, and now senior citizens’ representatives have once once more called for additional compensation. However, Nehammer referred to the number from Statistics Austria: “In my opinion, we will implement it in the same way.” Nothing more should be added: “So at 9.7 percent, we are dealing with a percentage that is very high.” We are talking regarding “amounts in the billions that will affect the budget,” explained the Chancellor. The inflation must be “compensated for pensioners, and that’s what we intend to do”.
For a long time nothing has been heard from the large presentation of the working group on incentives for longer work. She was not sunk, the chancellor assured when asked: There were “hard boards” to drill, “but we’re still drilling”. The Climate Protection Act and the Freedom of Information Act would be negotiated in the same way, with Nehammer emphasizing: “There was no federal government in the Second Republic that passed so many laws for climate protection and the environment,” he recalled, for example, regarding the eco-social tax reform, the climate ticket or the Renewable Energy Expansion Act.
One of the next big projects are the budget negotiations. Even if Finance Minister Magnus Brunner (ÖVP) has been warning for months to return to budget discipline, according to Nehammer “there will be no savings budget”. Because, according to the Chancellor, “the crises are not over yet” and experience has been gained that “investing into the crisis is always better in order to counter the crisis”. Nehammer is relaxed despite the friction between the federal and state governments in the financial equalization negotiations: “It’s a rough phase right now, that’s part of every negotiation process. At the end of the day it’s always regarding a lot of money, regarding interests, regarding compensation, but also regarding responsibility and tasks.” Finance ministers and social affairs ministers were “intensively negotiating” at the time, and he too would “make his contribution as Chancellor to ensure that the negotiations come to a good end.”
In any case, one thing is certain: 2024 will be a super election year. The EU elections are due in June, but it is still unclear who will run for the ÖVP as the top candidate. “From my point of view, there is no lack of time to answer this question now,” said Nehammer at the end of the year. Nehammer answered whether the long-standing ÖVP European politician and Vice President of the EU Parliament Othmar Karas was already out of the running because of his cross shots once morest the party line: “Othmar Karas is at liberty to behave as he behaves – but of course it will this behavior is then also evaluated in the overall view of a possible election dispute.” So does he have bad cards? “That’s your interpretation. I just said it as it came across to me.” Rumors that Foreign Minister Alexander Schallenberg might become the top candidate have “no real connection”. There is also “enough time” for the EU Commissioner’s question.
Nehammer said there were no plans to combine the National Council elections with the EU elections. The former will take place “as planned in September” 2024. Nehammer does not want to be deterred by the current poor polls for the ÖVP: “Of course, my goal is to lead the People’s Party into the election campaign, and above all, the most important thing is to maintain people’s trust in order to take responsibility once more may.” Asked whether he would like to continue governing with the Greens, Nehammer said: “I’ve learned in politics that it’s not a question of sensitivities,” but a “question of opportunities,” and the voters would distribute them.
Most recently, the ÖVP had tried to position itself in the “middle” and triggered a debate regarding the word “normal”. One wants to make politics “for the many”, affirmed Nehammer. “This debate regarding ‘what is normal’ was an attempt to state that we define anything radical as not normal.” In this context, he once once more criticized the climate activists: “I consider it absolutely essential in politics to take the consequences of climate change seriously, but the protest as it is being lived out right now by those who are stuck on the streets , I think that’s completely pointless because it makes people even heavier.”
Whether FPÖ leader Herbert Kickl is one of the extreme or radical for him? “Herbert Kickl is a security risk,” said Nehammer, he had “proved several times that the safety of the people in this country is not important to him.” As interior minister, Kickl “destroyed” the protection of the constitution and is now once morest the Skyshield anti-missile protection program. “He has not carried much responsibility and in the moments where he has carried it, he has failed.”
Nehammer himself also defined the identities as “not normal”, the FPÖ does not distance itself from the right-wing extremist movement. When asked why the ÖVP then governed in three federal states with the FPÖ, Nehammer replied that one had to “differentiate”. The Chancellor doesn’t see the FPÖ as a unified party: There is “a completely different form of cooperation in the federal states”. His contact person at the federal level is now Kickl. “It’s up to the FPÖ who it puts at the top. I say you can’t make a state with Herbert Kickl,” emphasized Nehammer, “because he himself has become a conspiracy theorist.” Nehammer apparently cannot imagine a coalition with Kickl: his goal is to prevent Kickl from becoming Chancellor. Would he be conceivable as Vice Chancellor? “I don’t think it’s possible to make a state with Herbert Kickl, in any form of responsibility.”
With the SPÖ, however, it might also be difficult for the ÖVP, whose new boss Andreas Babler has declared wealth taxes as a coalition condition. All of those “who are now setting up conditions and postulating such absolutist demands, I am assuming that they are inexperienced in federal politics,” said Nehammer. The cooperation with Babeler will prove itself. “He will simply have to fit himself into the role that democracy gives you as a competitor.” In a democracy, it’s also regarding the ability to compromise. Babler has also described himself as a Marxist, and “I think it’s a bit anachronistic to look for recipes from the past in order to solve problems of the future”. He considers “Marxism to be just as dangerous as fascism,” emphasized Nehammer.
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