“Colourless, visionless and meaningless,” commented the FPÖ General Secretary Michael Schnedlitz an interview with Babler on Saturday in the Ö1 radio series “Im Journal zu Gast”. In several inaugural interviews, Babler promoted wealth taxes and also named the reversal of the health insurance reform as a coalition condition.
The “restoration of democratic employee self-government in the Austrian health insurance fund” can already be found in Babler’s program. “Im Journal zu Gast” as well as in the “Tiroler Tageszeitung” and the “Vorarlberger Nachrichten” Babler confirmed on Saturday that the reform of the health insurance companies under turquoise-blue was “madness”. For him, their withdrawal is “one of the conditions” for a coalition.
Many comrades would “probably want Babler’s predecessor back as SPÖ leader,” Schnedlitz teased in a broadcast. The NEOS meanwhile took a shot at the statements made by the SPÖ boss on the subject of taxes. “New taxes are the last thing we need,” said their economic and social spokesman Gerald Loacker.
ÖVP General Secretary Christian Stocker accused Babler of untruth, referring to a press release from 2011. There, Babler had demanded that not only conscription but also the military be abolished, while in an interview with the “Standard” he said that he had always been in favor of conscription.
Secretary of Defense Claudia Tanner (ÖVP) objected to Babler’s willingness, expressed in the “Standard”, to discuss an EU army. “For me as defense minister, it is very irritating when someone advocates an EU army and military operations without a legal basis, i.e. a UN mandate,” she said in an interview. It is more important to advance the common security and defense policy in order to strengthen it. She invited the SPÖ leader to a personal meeting to talk to him about Austria’s role in security and defense policy.
