In its efforts to tighten EU asylum law, the ÖVP is now also targeting the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR). “The Human Rights Convention also needs to be revised. We now have a different situation than was the case a few decades ago when these laws were written,” said ÖVP club boss August Woeginger the daily newspaper “Der Standard”. The co-governing Greens immediately said that this issue was “non-negotiable”.
What changes Woeginger exactly required remained unclear. A corresponding written APA request from Friday evening has remained unanswered to date. The ECHR was drafted in 1950 by the Council of Europe, which includes all European countries except Belarus and Russia. The ECHR is of particular importance for Austria, as it has constitutional status in this country. Unlike other countries, Austria does not have its own comprehensive catalog of fundamental rights. The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR), an institution independent of the European Union, monitors compliance with the ECHR.
Woeginger called the Human Rights Convention when asked whether European asylum law needed to be revised. “For seven years, the European Union has failed to put viable solutions for the protection of the external borders on the table. This is a call to Europe to get going,” he emphasized, pointing out that Austria “is currently the second strongest pro -head burden within Europe”. In mid-October, Chancellor Karl Nehammer (ÖVP) sharply criticized the EU Commission and expressed the expectation that asylum policy would “get going”. However, he did not call for changes to the ECHR.
“Solutions instead of populist diversionary maneuvers”
Has no support for his push Woeginger at the coalition partner. “No, ÖVP. That’s #non-negotiable,” wrote Green security spokesman and lawyer Georg Bürstmayr on Twitter on Saturday afternoon. There is “no need for change” in the ECHR, the Greens said on Saturday to ORF.at. The human rights convention is “a great achievement of the European community of states” and ensures “the observance of human rights”. “The ÖVP is called upon to take part in actually solving the problems instead of launching populist diversionary maneuvers and questioning human rights.”
Caritas: “Unacceptable”
“Human rights are indivisible. And the European Convention on Human Rights is Europe’s response to the Second World War and the Holocaust. I consider shaking fundamental and human rights to be unacceptable,” emphasized Caritas President Michael Landau in a tweet in response to the Woeginger-Suggestion. Through Wögingers The proposal calls “a basic consensus of the Second Republic into question. It’s about the equal dignity of every human being, from disabled children to dying old people. All of this is non-negotiable. Therefore, such a move must be sharply rejected.”
FPÖ pleased
FPÖ General Secretary Michael Schnedlitz expressed satisfaction and criticism. The ÖVP is adopting “an approach from the FPÖ for which Herbert Kickl was scandalized during his time as Minister of the Interior,” it said in an FPÖ broadcast on Saturday. “This convention dates back to a time when a new migration of peoples was unthinkable. It should therefore be adapted to the present day in order to stop the misuse of asylum for illegal mass immigration,” Schnedlitz signaled approval for the initiative Wögingers. At the same time, he accused him of “talking his way out of the way to protect the EU’s external borders” on the migration issue, which was a “mockery of the local population”.
The current FPÖ boss Kickl had already called for a change to the ECHR or its replacement by an “Austrian Human Rights Convention” as FPÖ Secretary General in 2015. The then Justice Minister Wolfgang Brandstetter (ÖVP) reacted with outrage. According to Brandstetter at the time, anyone who demands this is “moving outside the scope of the Austrian constitution”. When Kickl, as interior minister, questioned the human rights convention again in early 2019 and said “that the principle applies that the law has to follow politics and not politics the law,” he was rebuked by the then Minister of Justice Josef Moser (ÖVP). Federal President Alexander Van der Bellen also condemned Kickl’s shaking of the ECHR. That “would be a denunciation of the basic consensus of the Second Republic,” said Van der Bellen on Twitter at the time.
Source: Nachrichten
