Call for Council and Commission declaration in plenary - Doubts over legality of Monday's statement

02/02/2000 (Agence Europe)

Several political groups of the European Parliament will, on Wednesday, at the opening of the plenary session, be calling for the Portuguese Presidency and the European Commission to make before MEPs a statement on the situation in Austria and on the declaration published on Monday by the Portuguese Presidency (see yesterday's EUROPE, p.9).

The leader of the Liberal Group, Pat Cox, has therefore written to the EP president calling for these declarations to be added to the agenda, above all in order to clear up the matter of Monday's declaration, as the group fears the declaration may finally help the FPÖ. Francis Wurtz, President of the United Left Group, also wrote to Nicole Fontaine to ask for a Council and Commission declaration, fearing that the extreme right in Europe may become trivialised.

Austrian Social Democrat Hannes Swoboda told the press for his part that he was "not very happy" with the statement by the 14 Member States which, he says, should have been more "conditional". It is wrong, stressed Mr Swoboda, to "claim that we have got to this situation because the left refused to form a government with the right". The Social Democrats are still willing to form such a government, "but not with Mr Schüssel, as we cannot trust him. The Austrian left is willing to start up again with new faces and new attitudes, on both sides", he added, hinting that the change of faces would also concern Former Chancellor Viktor Klima.

CDU elected member Harmut Nassauer denounced for his part the "flagrant irregularity" of the European right's point of view, "threats against Austria", and considers that the fourteen Member States should not have endorsed a declaration like the one diffused on Monday.

Olivier Dupuis (Lista Bonino) preferred to insist on democratic shortcomings in Member States which "are on the front line in this new crusade, France, Belgium and Italy". He considered Monday's declaration as quite literally mad from the legal and political point of view.

ÖVP delegation at European Parliament rejects declaration by Fourteen

The seven MEPs of Österreichische Volkspartei (Wolfgang Schüssel's party) diffused a joint declaration in which they rejected the statement by the fourteen Member Sates on Monday. They consider it to be quite out of proportion and deplore the fact that it had been adopted "without first having dialogue with Austrian authorities". Austria, they say, is a "stable democracy in which the Constitution guarantees human rights and fundamental liberties". It has an independent justice system and is a country "open to the world in which xenophobia and discrimination against foreigners has no place". Austria "of course" subscribes to the fundamental values of the EU and keeps to them, and it in no way deserves to be isolated, they say.