“I hope that there will be resistance against Mr. Kurz from Austria and Mr. Jansa from Slovenia, who are both clearly and definitely in line with Orban, Salvini and Le Pen,” Asselborn told “Welt” (Tuesday). Foreign Minister Alexander Schallenberg (ÖVP) rejected the criticism as “absurd”.
Chancellor Sebastian Kurz (ÖVP) and the Slovenian head of government Janez Jansa, like the Hungarian head of government Viktor Orban and the right-wing populist politicians in Italy and France, Matteo Salvini and Marine Le Pen, would show “direct human solidarity at this extremely dramatic moment with the tortured people in Afghanistan “, said the Luxembourg social democrat, who is also migration minister, before the special meeting of EU interior ministers on Tuesday. “You lose the quality of being a European,” the senior foreign minister in the EU told the German newspaper “Die Welt”. Asselborn wanted the European Union to provide “40,000 to 50,000 resettlement places for Afghan refugees”.
Foreign Minister Schallenberg reacted with sharp criticism and accused Asselborn of “cheap populism”. The criticism of Kurz is “simply absurd,” said Schallenberg, referring to the fact that Austria is home to the fourth largest community of Afghans per capita worldwide and the second largest within the EU. “It would be welcomed if Asselborn showed a similar level of solidarity and humanity. For that, Luxembourg would have to take in six times as many Afghans as it currently has. Then it might be in a position to give advice,” he said on Tuesday in a statement submitted to the APA.
Luxembourg is cordially invited to catch up with Austria. “Until then, ‘si tacuisses, philosophus mansisses’ applies (if you had remained silent, you would have remained a philosopher, note),” said the Foreign Minister. In other words: Asselborn is destroying its good reputation by making a statement. “Abusing the tragic situation in Afghanistan for cheap populism and blindly repeating the mistakes of 2015 and 2016 does not make you a good European,” criticized Schallenberg.
