The new Austrian Chancellor Christian Stocker has called for a review of the European Union's current asylum rules, saying they no longer reflect reality and are contributing to the rise of radical right-wing sentiment among voters. This is reported by the Financial Times, writes UNN.
Details
It is reported that Christian Stocker, leader of the center-right People's Party (ÖVP), said his three-party coalition aims to restore "stability" and "satisfaction" in a country that has not yet recovered from the historic victory of the far-right Freedom Party (FPÖ) in last year's parliamentary elections.
According to him, Austria is among a "growing group of countries that are actually dealing with this issue (reform of asylum in the EU - ed.) very deeply, and we all agree that the laws we have now no longer correspond to their original intention."
We need to go back to the roots of what this law means so that it can be applied to those who need it
According to reports, Stocker's government has taken operational measures to address public concerns about immigration, limiting the right of refugees to bring their children and close family members.
Austria argues that EU rules on family reunification have sparked a wave of youth crime and have led to schools being unable to cope with the influx of children who do not speak German.
However, human rights activists argue that the government is exaggerating the scale of the problem and that it has no reason to declare a state of emergency in the field of public order that would allow it to deviate from EU asylum law.
Stocker denied that he was simply adopting the anti-immigrant FPÖ's policies, saying that the restrictions bear the "signature" of his party and are supported by other members of the coalition.
65-year-old Stocker has been sharply criticized for trying to form a government with the far right after initially failing to reach an agreement with other centrist parties. During the election campaign, he condemned the hardline FPÖ leader Herbert Kickl as a threat to democracy and national security.
Stocker, an unremarkable conservative who has been a local politician in the northeastern city of Wiener Neustadt for 35 years, said he "understands" the criticism.
He hoped that Kickl would be able to "rethink himself" in the coalition negotiations. However, the "horizon narrowed with each of our conversations," and it became clear that he was "more interested in destroying than in actually improving something that might have been wrong."
Kickl, a conspiracy theorist and participant in the anti-vaccination campaign, has steered his party in a more extreme direction. It still came first in the elections last September, with 29 percent of the vote, as voters turned away from the mainstream parties.
Despite the difficult coalition negotiations with Kickl, Stocker disagrees with the idea, which is still widespread in Germany and other European countries, that the mainstream parties should build a "wall" around far-right or national conservative parties and refuse to cooperate with them.
According to Stocker, each country has to solve this problem in its own way, noting that the FPÖ is part of the coalition governments of five of Austria's nine states.
Recall
Earlier, it was reported that the new Austrian government is trying to address widespread concerns about immigration that have fueled support for the far right in the country.