Lower Austria’s conservative far-right government of ÖVP and FPÖ is going against federal plans to increase the country’s CO2 tax, claiming high inflation requires support, not additional burdens.
In 2023, a right-wing government came to power in Austria’s second-largest state and conservative heartland, Lower Austria. A national CO2 tax introduced by Vienna at the end of 2022, which will be passed on to citizens via direct payments of more than €150 per person, has now raised their ire.
“The federal government must suspend the CO2 price until the inflation rate returns to a normal level,” Lower Austria Governor Johanna Mikl-Leitner (ÖVP) said on Thursday.
Mikl-Leitner even urged the Greens, who govern Austria alongside the conservatives at the federal level, to drop their insistence on climate protection. They should “think of the ordinary people in our country on this issue and not of the blunt implementation of their party programme,” she added.
Her second-in-command, the far-right’s Udo Landbauer, stressed that “relief is needed, not additional burdens.”
The far-right has long opposed the climate protection measure introduced only last year. Citing high prices at the pump, the FPÖ regularly calls for the immediate abolition of diesel and petrol taxes and the CO2 price.
“That the car-hating, CO2-obsessed green eco-Marxists don’t care about any of this is no surprise to anyone,” said FPÖ secretary general Christian Hafenecker the week before.
Voter support for the FPÖ remains stable at around 30%, while the ÖVP is polling below 25% – figures that could lead to a potentially viable coalition in Vienna after the 2024 elections.
(Nikolaus J. Kurmayer | Euractiv.de)
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