The Lower Austria election campaign does not leave out federal politics either. Climate protection minister Leonore Gewessler (Greens) has initially rebuffed her request for a ban on fracking from her coalition partner.
Gewessler was of course surprised in front of journalists today: If everyone is against fracking anyway, it can be “no problem” to anchor it. “Nobody wants fracking,” affirmed ÖVP State Secretary Florian Tursky, but it’s “not an issue.”
Ban “can’t be a problem”
Before the Council of Ministers meeting, Gewessler emphasized that the controversial gas extraction method of fracking made no sense in Austria from an environmental, climate and economic point of view. Your corresponding Ministerial speech did not make it onto the agenda.
She finds it “amazing” when “everyone is against it,” Gewessler pointed out that in Lower Austria the Greens and the ÖVP are against fracking, but the ÖVP in the federal government has also spoken out against it. “Then it’s only logical for me that we pour that into a proposal for the Council of Ministers,” said the Green Minister, “then that can’t be a problem.”
Not an issue for ÖVP at the moment
She wanted to avoid people worrying that this was just “lip service” before an election, Gewessler probably alluded to the upcoming Lower Austrian state elections. “That’s why I think it would be good, also for the credibility of politics, if we followed words with deeds.”
State Secretary Tursky – who represented the injured Finance Minister Magnus Brunner – tried to defend the ÖVP’s no on behalf of the coalition partner: “It is very clear to us: nobody wants fracking.” But there is currently no project for it and “that’s why it’s simple for us no problem”. Should there be a need for regulation on the occasion of a project, this will be dealt with.
Gewessler’s advance should have been sunk in any case for the time being. The proposal is “in the government’s internal coordination,” as the minister put it.
