At first it was a game about the gang: When Environment Minister Leonore Gewessler (Greens) announced the evaluation of major road construction projects by Asfinag a few weeks ago, the outcry came from the federal states. In addition to Vienna’s SP Mayor Michael Ludwig, who does not want to be deprived of the Lobau tunnel, the alarm bells rang, especially among VP provincial governors.
Now the dispute has reached the top level: During a visit to Vorarlberg on Wednesday evening, Federal Chancellor Sebastian Kurz (VP) agreed to support his Governor Markus Wallner with the planned Bodensee expressway (S18) – one of the projects to be examined from Gewessler’s point of view. “We are on the side of the population, the project has been planned for a long time, it has been promised for a long time, and it has to be carried out,” said Kurz in an interview with the “Vorarlberger Nachrichten”.
He also criticized Gewessler’s basic attitude: It would be “completely wrong to believe that we can save the climate in the future by just doing without it,” said Kurz. Rather, you have to rely on research and innovation.
Gewessler was unimpressed by the allegations yesterday. “I can do relatively little with the discussion,” she said. Environmental and climate protection, “that does not mean going back into the past, that means going forward courageously”, she also rejected comparisons made by Kurz, according to which one was going back on the “path to the Stone Age” with “renouncing mobility and individual traffic”.
Yesterday, Greens club boss Sigrid Maurer countered this: “Anyone who believes they can overcome the climate crisis without changing anything lives in the Stone Age,” she pointed out to Kurz. The latter, in turn, added on a visit to Salzburg: There would be no climate lockdown “with him.
The conflict had recently led to a unique process in parliament: In the Federal Council, a VP of Vorarlberg’s MPs voted for a red-blue motion for a resolution, which called on Gewessler to withdraw their evaluation requests. Both sides said that the ÖVP and the Greens did not want to “overestimate” the break in the coalition. For reasons of coalition, the ÖVP had to vote with the Greens in the special session of the National Council on Monday to examine alternatives to the S18. Yesterday, Gewessler and Maurer also referred to this “mandate from Parliament”. According to Maurer, the Chancellor probably expressed his “personal opinion” on the S18.
