EU Bares Its Teeth Over Austria ‘Crisis’

The European Union, known for dawdling in an emergency or settling for half-measures, has responded with startling firmness to the rise of the far right in Austria, saying Europe’s ideals of freedom and tolerance are at stake.

“Everyone has been aware that an extreme right-wing party joining the government of a member country creates one of the Union’s worst-ever crises, because it is a moral crisis, a crisis of values,” Nicole Fontaine, the French president of the European Parliament, said Wednesday.

“The new Austrian coalition would force an unacceptable breach in the resistance to a resurgence of fascist ideas in Europe,” Belgian Foreign Minister Louis Michel said. In a radio broadcast, Michel on Wednesday even asked Belgians not to go skiing this winter in the Austrian Alps, saying it would be “immoral.”

Earlier this week, Austria’s partners in the 15-nation EU agreed to impose a political quarantine on Vienna if Joerg Haider’s Freedom Party joins a new ruling coalition, an outcome that now seems likely. Despite his fears that Austria would become isolated, President Thomas Klestil has indicated that he is likely to approve a government of Haider’s party and the conservative People’s Party because it reflects the will of the people.

The unanimous threat from the other EU nations to freeze bilateral political and diplomatic contacts with Austria constitutes an unprecedented attempt to influence another European country’s internal affairs, even if doing so flouts the verdict of free and fair elections.

Milestone in Process of Bloc’s Transformation

Like the single European currency founded last year and the EU’s attempts to forge single foreign and security policies to face emergencies such as the war in Kosovo, the warning marks a milestone in the process of transforming a trading bloc into a union of nations with a single set of standards, including in politics.

During his political career, the 50-year-old Haider has praised Adolf Hitler’s “decent employment policies,” called the Nazi SS “men of character” and used election posters warning of Austria’s “over-foreignization”--language that sounds to many ears like Nazi-era sloganeering.

Francisco Seixas da Costa, Portugal’s secretary of state for European affairs, declared that Europe’s increasingly tight integration means the continent now has firm tenets to abide by.

The Treaty of Amsterdam, which came into effect last year, explicitly establishes democracy, respect for law, civil rights and the rights of minorities as fundamental principles throughout the European Union. Violators are subject to sanction.

“Europe is united by values,” Italian Prime Minister Massimo D’Alema said. “If one goes against those values, then one’s relations with the EU are thrown into crisis.”

The unanimity and firmness among EU members were striking, for in the past, the same nations have often failed to deal speedily and effectively with emergencies, such as the 1992-95 Bosnian war, or with even relatively minor issues such as whether to curtail duty-free sales in airports.

Though Europe proclaims respect for the wishes of voters, many prominent Europeans hinted or said openly that that value would have to yield in the present case. Amos Luzzatto, leader of the Union of Italian Jewish Communities, warned that if “xenophobia” were allowed to triumph in Austria, it could spread to other EU countries.

“The fact that Haider was elected democratically means very little. Hitler was also elected by the people,” Luzzatto said.

According to Jean-Louis Quermonne, president of the French Political Sciences Assn., Western European leaders may also be sending a message to 13 other countries that are candidates for EU membership that they must take seriously the obligations spelled out in the Amsterdam Treaty. The EU has already voiced support for the rights of the Kurds in Turkey and of ethnic minorities in countries of the former Eastern Bloc, such as the Hungarian population of Romania.

No Mechanism Exists to Expel Member State

Ironically, Austria’s standing in the Brussels-based EU itself will not be affected, at least not immediately, if Haider’s party does enter the new government.

According to Ricardo Franco Levi, chief spokesman for the European Commission, the EU’s executive branch, Austria would have to engage in “a serious and persistent breach of fundamental principles” to have its voting rights suspended.

There is no mechanism to expel a member state from the European Union; membership is supposed to be “in full and forever,” Levi said.

The EU countries’ action carries the evident risk of making Haider look to some Austrians like the victim of foreign pressure, increasing his stature. And citizens in some EU countries, including Britain, who object to the idea of a European superstate may become even more wary now that the precedent has been set of allowing the EU to meddle in a country’s internal affairs.

Though some of Europe’s conservative politicians, notably French President Jacques Chirac, have been in the vanguard of efforts to keep Haider from power, others have objected to the campaign. Karl Lamers, foreign policy spokesman for the right-of-center CDU-CSU bloc in the German Bundestag, wondered aloud if Austria wasn’t being targeted because it is a “small country.”

Lamers also asked why Communists, members of governing coalitions in France and Italy with their own totalitarian pasts to live down, haven’t been declared political pariahs as well.

The Clinton administration has also served notice on the Austrians that it will review bilateral relations if the Freedom Party is allowed to join the government. Faced with an Austrian government including Haider’s party, French Foreign Minister Hubert Vedrine said France and the other EU countries “will pursue a policy on the one hand of exerting pressure, so that the Austrians realize the error of the path they have taken, and on the other, of constant vigilance.”