"Out of all proportion"

EU elections: Schilling accuses EPP of “campaign of lies”

(Bild: APA/Georg Hochmuth)

Lena Schilling, lead candidate for the Austrian Greens in the EU elections, is taking a confrontational stance with the European People's Party (EPP). Their "campaign of lies" against the EU renaturation law is "really - pardon me - outrageous".

In her criticism, Schilling referred to the struggle for the "Nature Restoration Law". The EPP in particular, to which the ÖVP belongs, railed against the project last year. Thousands of scientists, on the other hand, had publicly spoken out in favor and attempted to refute the most common objections in an open letter. In July of last year, the EU Parliament finally voted in favor of the law in a watered-down form, but there is currently no majority in the Council. Austria does not support the law either.

Support for Commission leadership depends on content
Whether the Greens would support Ursula von der Leyen as the new head of the EU Commission, who had campaigned for the Green Deal in 2019, was something Schilling did not want to answer unequivocally in the APA interview - it would depend on the candidates and their programs. "For me, it is really about electing a Commission President who stands for a progressive turnaround, where we put climate protection, the social issue and equal rights at the top of the agenda," she said. Schilling therefore called for clear paths to reducing emissions, a mobility transition, nature conservation and a move away from fossil fuels as prerequisites for Green support for the future Commission President.

The EU lead candidate is going head-to-head with the People's Party.

(Bild: APA/Georg Hochmuth)

Schilling is calling for clear paths to reducing emissions, a change in mobility and more nature conservation.

(Bild: APA/Georg Hochmuth)

The fact that the ÖVP - the Greens' coalition partner in Austria - and its sister parties CDU and CSU in Germany are now massively attacking the ban on new combustion vehicles from 2035 is incomprehensible to the Greens, even from an economic point of view. Companies need predictability, she said, and for them "this zigzag course" is a disaster. However, Schilling did not want to see the end of the People's Party as a partner for the Greens in Europe and Austria.

Regrettable farewell to Karas
There are also "glimmers of hope" in the form of more progressive forces in the EPP, she said. "People like Othmar Karas voted for climate protection and nature conservation in many cases," she said, regretting his departure. In Austria, for example, the ÖVP had blocked the Climate Protection Act, but she hoped that the conservatives at EU level would turn around if they realized that their blockades on climate protection and nature conservation would also drive agriculture into crisis in the coming years. It is at this level that matters, after all, 80 percent of domestic laws are made in the EU.

For Lena Schilling, support for Ukraine is beyond question, but she calls for more active help: Austria "is a neutral state and will remain so", but should help with the demining and reconstruction of destroyed power grids in Ukraine. As part of an active policy of neutrality, Austria should take its responsibility within the framework of the common EU foreign and security policy seriously. On the question of whether she supported a stronger EU defense policy, Schilling explained that in this "new reality" more spending on armaments was necessary.

No to tougher asylum policy defended
Schilling defended the fact that the Greens voted against the tightening of EU asylum and migration policy recently adopted by the European Parliament. "We have a European Convention on Human Rights, we have agreed on values, we have agreed that we deal with people in accordance with human rights." According to the politician, the pact could have been an opportunity. However, this would have required a binding distribution key for refugees for all EU states, which would also have to apply to Hungary.