UN rights chief warns new right-wing Austrian govt against ‘peddling of fear’

Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein: Chancellor’s hard-right positions mark ‘dangerous development’ in Europe’s political life

By AFP and ToI Staff 18 December 2017, 9:05 pm

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Newly sworn-in Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Kurz, left, and new Vice Chancellor Heinz-Christian Strache, the FPOe’s chairman, talk during the swearing-in ceremony of the new Austrian government in Vienna on December 18, 2017. (AP Photo/Ronald Zak)

GENEVA, Switzerland — The UN rights chief said Monday that the far-right tilt of Austria’s new coalition government marked a “dangerous development,” and cautioned against “the peddling of fear” in European politics.

“I am very worried,” the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein told AFP in an interview, cautioning that the new Chancellor Sebastian Kurz’s decision to take hard-right positions on issues, such as immigration, to win support marked “a dangerous development… in the political life of Europe.”

EU President Donald Tusk warned Austria’s new chancellor that he expected the country to “continue to play a constructive and pro-European role,” as the far right Freedom Party was sworn in as part of the government.

The Freedom Party (FPOe), coalition partners with the conservative People’s Party (OeVP) of Chancellor Sebastian Kurz, has pledged to stop illegal immigration, cut taxes, and resist EU centralization.

UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Jordan’s Zeid Ra’ad al Hussein, speaks to the media during a news conference at the European headquarters of the United Nations in Geneva, Switzerland, May 1, 2017. (Salvatore Di Nolfi/AP)

Austria will hold the EU’s rotating presidency in the second half of next year, and in a letter congratulating Kurz on his election, Tusk warned that Brussels expected Vienna to stick by its commitments to the bloc.

“I trust that the Austrian government will continue to play a constructive and pro-European role in the European Union,” Tusk wrote.

“This is especially important at a time when the European Council is engaging more directly on politically sensitive issues in the context of the Leaders’ Agenda.”

The Leaders’ Agenda is a series of top level meetings initiated by Tusk to move European reform forward against the backdrop of Brexit.

The new government unveiled a policy platform on Saturday that “commits to Europe,” but also pledges to use the Austrian EU presidency to “take a leading role in correcting some of the erroneous developments” of the bloc.

It also plans a summit on the contentious issue of immigration as part of its presidency.

The issue of how to deal with migrants arriving in the EU has proven enormously divisive, with eastern European countries highly resistant to compulsory quotas for how many they should host.