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| You are in: | | Front Page > Europe > New Europe |
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| 16 January 2003 - Published at 11h46 GMT | ||||||||||||
| Austria looks East | ||||||||||||
 Austria and the EU | ||||||||||||
Austria is at the sharp end of EU enlargement, it shares borders with four of the 10 countries which will join the EU next year. Alix Kroeger reports from Austria on the hopes and fears: Hungarian gypsy musicians play on the streets of a small town in Carinthia: one of the oldest forms of economic migration in Central Europe. The area has a large Slovene minority. Only 50 kilometres away lies the border with Slovenia itself – until 1991, a part of communist Yugoslavia, now set to join the EU next year. Carinthia's market stallholders fear they'll be swamped by a tidal wave of new arrivals. ”There are so few jobs, and so many jobless – businesses are taking on very few employees – the economic situation is very bad,” said one woman. Crime is on the rise “I'm against eastern enlargement because in the provinces, crime is on the rise, and that's because more people are coming from the former Eastern Bloc countries,” said one man. The fears of many Austrians are rooted in memory, according to sociologist Dr Albert Reiterer. “People remember very well that Austria was a poor country four decades ago,” he points out. “Nowadays Austria belongs to the countries which has one of the highest per capita products. [But] people remember having been poor: they fear falling back to poverty, and it may be that this anxiety explains some of their stances, for instance looking to [EU] enlargement.” “Not so fast” In 1920, Carinthia voted to remain part of Austria, rather than join Slovenia and what would become Yugoslavia. Journalist Jochen Bendele says old prejudices against the Slovenes now come in new guises.
Not so fast – that's exactly what Joerg Haider of the far-right Freedom Party says. “It's a difficult process because there are a lot of barriers to survive [sic], especially if you take all the 10 new members in one step inside the European Union. It will urge a lot of problems, because there must somewhere be someone who finances this enlargement process. There must be a clearance of the question how to finance and how to subsidise the farmer policy, what's going on with the opening of the labour market and so on.” Fear fuels far right
But Mr Haider, governor of Carinthia, has support in some surprising places – including the kitchens of his own parliament, where Keno, a Bosnian refugee, now works. Keno came to Austria 10 years ago – he says EU enlargement will bring too many more migrants from the East. “The people in Slovakia or other countries, they don't have so much, and they think, when the door is open, they will all come and make big money here. And that will be a problem. Some Austrian people will have to go away from the places where they are working twenty years.” And Keno sees no reason why Austria shouldn't close its doors to immigrants like him. “Yeah, why not? When they think that I am criminal or something, they have to show me the door. But I am 10 years here, I'm working, I pay all what I have to pay, like other people and I don't think that they have a problem with me.” Keno even says he would vote for Mr Haider: he doesn't agree with everything he says, but respects him nonetheless – for saying what he thinks and doing what he says. This is one of the keys to the far right's success across Europe in recent years – the willingness of its leaders to break the silence of consensus, and voice the opinions of their voters, however unpalatable those may be to the mainstream. Cross-border commuters In Vienna's Westbahnhof station, trains bring hundreds of arrivals from the east every day. The border with Slovakia is less than an hour away. When the Iron Curtain fell, in 1989, then, too, people feared an influx of foreigners – but the tide of immigrants which arrived came from further south: refugees fleeing the wars in the former Yugoslavia. Many of the people spilling off the trains in Vienna every morning will make the return journey that night. They're cross-border commuters – they can earn higher wages in Austria, but they don't want to live there permanently. Since 1988, Pavel Rencok has been a waiter at Vienna City Hall. One of 20 Slovaks working there, he does it partly for the money, but mainly for the experience of working in another country. He's glad Slovakia is joining the EU – but he has no intention of moving his family to Austria. “I haven't yet made up my mind, whether I'll try to find work at home. To go back to Slovakia, and start working there, all over again – that would be hard. Maybe I'll build a restaurant with my sons in Bratislava …I hope it will work out. But I don't know.” Old attitudes Across the street from the City Hall stands the Café Landtmann – the haunt of Vienna's political elite since the 1870s. History casts a long shadow here – as Anneliese Rohrer, foreign editor of the national newspaper Die Presse, points out. “What is interesting is how history comes down on us, because if I give you the attitudes of the Austrians towards the neighbours, it's like it was in the monarchy. We don't like the Czechs. Why? Because in the monarchy, the servants came from Czechoslovakia. We do like and respect the Hungarians. Why? Because in the mid-19th century we made the Hungarians in the monarchy equal.” “We do hate the Poles,” Ms Rohrer continues. “Why? Because the industrial, blue-collar worker came in. And then we dislike the Slovenes, or we fear the Slovenes, because of historical reasons: in 1918 and again in 1945 they had territorial demands. What we're seeing now with the EU enlargement is the Austrian-Hungarian monarchy in replay.” Counting the cost Supporters of EU enlargement point to the economic benefits: not just increased trade, but political stability as well.
The bank's vice-president, Herbert Stepic, says EU enlargement will also strengthen political stability in the region. “If you consider the real cost of EU enlargement, we are talking about 1.27 per cent of our Gross National Product, all the EU members,” says Herbert Stepic, the vice-president of Raiffeisen Bank. The bank has extended its operations from Austria into most of the EU candidate countries and beyond. “What is that in comparison with a day of warfare in the Balkan countries?” Mr Stepic asks rhetorically. “If there wouldn't have been the carrot of an EU enlargement, I am definitely convinced that nationalistic movements in all these countries would have become much, much stronger. Therefore I say that the cost of the EU enlargement, even if it would be double as high, is nothing in comparison with what we really save or what we build for the future.” Nonetheless, there may be a political price to pay. EU leaders will still have to convince a sometimes sceptical public of the benefits of enlargement. Otherwise, they risk a backlash – and more support for the populist far right, which has shown its power to attract the votes of those who feel excluded from Europe's expanding horizons. | ||||||||||||
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