Key politicians of Austria’s government coalition have traded barbs in the press, with Vice-Chancellor Wern Kogler of the co-ruling Greens accusing the centre-right ÖVP of adopting pre-facist terminology, with high-level members of the conservatives firing back, calling his comments careless.
When the Austrian government was formed, it was a trial run on how well a left-leaning environmental party could work with a centre-right conservative big-tent party. One year ahead of the elections, relations are increasingly frosty.
Recently, ÖVP regional chief Johanna Mikl-Leitner laid claim to the “normal” people who care little about climate change or protecting nature. Kogler called her statements “extremely dangerous and, moreover, pre-fascistoid.”
“Such an approach is the gateway for evil in the world, to speak in the diction of the Catholic ÖVP,” he added in an interview with profil.
Mikl-Leitner quickly shot back.“Whoever is in the centre is called left by the right and right by the left – now even fascist,” she said, criticising the heavy accusations levied against her. The governor of Lower Austria called the vice chancellor’s choice of words “careless.”
It was, of course a “thorn in the side of the leader of the Greens” to represent the population’s thoughts on climate activists or the “tasks of the EU” which should not see itself as “a green front organisation,” she said on Sunday.
With voters set to head to the polls in Autumn 2024, he added that internal squabbles are much more likely to be a boon to the far-right than to mobilise the parties’ voter base.
(Nikolaus J. Kurmayer | EURACTIV.de)
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