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Integration Minister Susanne Raab (right): There is no secret that the “Leitkultur” project is primarily aimed at people with a migration background
Photo: Christopher Dunker / dpa
A lot of water will still flow down the Danube before the parliamentary elections at the end of September. But the political campaigns have been running for a long time, and Chancellor Karl Nehammer's People's Party (ÖVP) in particular needs it: six months before the polls, the Conservatives are in distant third place in surveys - just behind the Social Democrats and far behind the radical right-wing FPÖ .
Against this background, the ÖVP has launched a new maneuver to increase its popularity with voters. For days, the party has been flooding social media with slogans like: "Anyone who rejects our way of life must leave," and the tabloid media also convey the message in bold letters. The foreseeable outrage has been surging ever since, and with it public attention to the issue - a common trick used by Austrian spin doctors.
This Thursday, what the ÖVP means by "our kind" should be introduced with less pithy tones: Nehammer's party friend, Integration Minister Susanne Raab, organized a commission of experts in the pompous rooms of the Vienna Chancellery with which she would like to work together to develop an "Austrian guiding culture". .
“Basic consensus of living together”
The order for this comes from their party leader and Chancellor Nehammer. He had called for a definition of what constitutes the “leading culture” of the Alpine republic: by 2030, the project should “also be legally reflected as a statutory cultural asset.”
What exactly that means will be defined over the remaining six years by Minister Raab's commission, which includes, among others, a lawyer, a professor of labor and social law and a former banker who has since worked for the former EU Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker has worked.
Minister Raab now explained in a short statement what such an "Austrian guiding culture" should constitute: the rule of law and democracy, gender equality, "including freedom of the press" - in short: "basic values and basic principles that are also derived from the constitution." the conservatives say it's about a "basic consensus on how to live together." The committee should work out what these values mean “in practical terms in everyday life”.
Raab made no secret of the fact that the “Leitkultur” project was primarily aimed at people with a migrant background. The minister, who is responsible for women in addition to integration, was only briefly specific: she complained that some patients refused to be treated by female doctors. Some male young people treated female teachers disrespectfully and, as “self-proclaimed moral guardians,” wanted to tell girls how they should live.
Green coalition partner speaks of “symbolic politics”
The problems undoubtedly exist, but how a commission with no democratic legitimacy and a “leading culture” is supposed to remedy the situation remains a mystery. This does not mean a duplicate of the constitution. “The Austrian identity is more than the laws that make up our country,” the minister once said. She did not say why a new set of rules should then be created.
There is much to suggest that the “Leitkultur” project is merely an election campaign maneuver – a superfluous one at that.
Accordingly, Raab and her ÖVP received massive criticism, including from their own coalition partner. Faika El-Nagashi, integration spokeswoman for the Greens, speaks of “symbolic politics that sows suspicion and mistrust.” But her coalition partner's action is "just about political change," she told the "Standard." Neither culture nor values are homogeneous in Austria, and they cannot be prescribed, according to the Green Party. The FPÖ criticizes Raab's initiative as "cheap insult “ and speaks of “voter fraud.”
It is questionable whether the ÖVP can score points with its “leading culture” debate in the election year. When the conservatives raised the issue of migration shrilly for months starting in the summer of 2022, they benefited neither in surveys nor in state elections. The excited ÖVP sentiment at the time obviously paved the way for another party: the xenophobic FPÖ subsequently shot up in the polls and has since become the strongest political force in Austria.