Last Tuesday, Vice Chancellor Werner Kogler invited journalists from the foreign press to his ministry in Vienna's Radetzkystraße near the Danube Canal.
Defaced on the outside by construction sites, inside, well, functional.
But Kogler likes to sit there, after all, he has a nice view from his desk.
And above all, he values the influence that his party, the Greens, have.
For the first time in Austria they are involved in the federal government.
Kogler listed the achievements in detail, above all the ecological tax reform that had only been passed a few days earlier.
Austria is finally getting into the pricing of CO2 emissions.
Stephan Löwenstein
Political correspondent based in Vienna.
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For critics, for whom the agreed rates are too low and the other compromises with the Chancellor Party too high, he wrote in the studbook what would have been achieved in this direction if the Greens had not formed a coalition with Sebastian's "turquoise" ÖVP at the beginning of 2020 Would have been received briefly, but the right FPÖ, which would at least have been mathematically possible: namely nothing.
Instead, they still have a lot to do.
Purpose: To make the previous ÖVP chairman look bad
A day later, it all seemed to be wasted. The Public Prosecutor for Economic Affairs and Corruption (WKStA) had searches carried out in the Federal Chancellery and the ÖVP, among others. The suspicion against Kurz and his closest employees: They are said to have developed an extensive "crime plan" about five years ago to order surveys from the Ministry of Finance with tax money and to place them in the tabloid media in return for advertisements. The surveys are said to have been tweaked and the costs were partly disguised by means of bogus invoices. Purpose: to make the ÖVP look very bad under its then chairman Reinhold Mitterlehner, but very well under chairman Kurz. The goal: to win the party chairmanship and then also the Federal Chancellery.Both were actually achieved in an impressive coup in 2017.
The investigators came to the suspicion through cell phone chats of the then most influential official in the Ministry of Finance, Thomas Schmid. They got their hands on his mobile phone during a search in another cause. Shortly before the seizure, Schmid allegedly tried to delete everything by resetting the device to the factory settings.
However, the conversations could be restored via backup files.
Several times, these chats, via those involved in the proceedings from the files or via the Ibiza Committee of Inquiry to the media, brought Kurz into distress.
The trial against him for false testimony is based in part on this.
But also the impertinence with which Schmid chatted on his cell phone with Kurz and others from his circle about others caused trouble.
Sometimes it was about representatives of the Church, sometimes about former cabinet colleagues.
Impression of familiarity
Chats leaked out again at the weekend.
Schmid and Kurz talk about Mitterlehner and refer to him and generally "the old idiots" (Schmid) in the party with rude insults.
At first glance, this has nothing to do with the criminal charges.
But it certainly didn't make the picture more beautiful that is now being drawn.
It is particularly tricky within the party too, because it was precisely at this moment that Kurz needed solidarity within the party, not least the support of Schmid's “old fools”, especially the governors.