Conservatives eager to win important looming local elections in the state of Lower Austria are wanting to further crack down on climate activists with stricter sentences, though legal experts see such a move as problematic.
On 29 January, elections will be held in Lower Austria, the country’s largest state currently governed by the conservative ÖVP.
In that context, the party that is looking for a decisive victory in Lower Austria is pushing for harsher and sometimes proactive penalties for “climate hacks” – activists that glue themselves to roads and museum exhibits.
While activists’ concerns are understandable, “I am firmly convinced that the means are simply the wrong ones”, explained Johanna Mikl-Leitner, the leader of the electioneering Lower Austria ÖVP, on Tuesday.
There was no justification for “obstructing rescue organisations and thus endangering human lives,” she added. Her state would push legislation that would make climate protests a more severe crime, following similar examples in Germany.
Mikl-Leitner noted that Austrian criminal law limited action to “after the fact.” But “we don’t want something to happen first, we don’t want people to die first,” she added. The German offence of “dangerous intervention” in traffic could be a model.
Once her administration is done drafting the law, it would be presented to the justice ministry. Unlike in other policy areas, like the buildings sector, Austrian states do not have the competence to regulate criminal matters.
“The offence is quite narrow and hardly applicable to the climate activists,” Ingeborg Zerbes, a professor at the University of Vienna, told the Austrian daily Standard.
(Nikolaus J. Kurmayer | EURACTIV.de)
Source: euractiv.com
