Chancellor Nehammer: A possible boycott of Austrian companies would rather harm Romania

Austrian Chancellor Karl Nehammer warns that a possible boycott of Austrian companies in Romania, as a response to Vienna’s refusal to accept our country’s accession to Schengen, would do more harm to Romania than to Austria, because Austrian companies bring money to the country’s budget and create jobs the work.

In an interview on the public television station ORF2, Nehammer vehemently denied that the negative vote against Romania had political reasons and reiterated that the veto would be lifted only when Romania and Bulgaria improve their border protection.

Austria’s latest veto against the accession of Bulgaria and Romania to the Schengen Area, which guarantees the free movement of people in the Schengen countries, has provoked sharp criticism not only from the countries concerned, but also from many other EU countries. Even the right-wing Italian government condemned the move.

Asked in an interview why Austria did not choose the usual path in the EU, namely to look for allies among the other states and thus achieve changes, Nehammer said that no other country has – in proportion to its population – a pressure similar to that of Austria. Also, the Netherlands tried for a long time to find support in the EU Council, but failed.

In the other EU countries, simply, the problem was perceived differently than in Austria, and since the European Commission did not act, it had to act “strongly” and at the national level, explained Nehammer.

The chancellor largely repeated his argument and that of the ÖVP interior minister, Gerhard Karner: of the more than 100,000 immigrants or asylum seekers, 75,000 had not been registered anywhere, or this should have happened when crossing the EU’s external border . Many of these unregistered people would come through Romania or Bulgaria, says Nehammer.

He acknowledged that Romania and Bulgaria had other figures, but said those countries had no way of knowing the real number since they did not register these people. Regarding an alleged connection between the negative vote given to Romania and the internal elections in Austria, Nehammer said that this hypothesis is an “absurd” one.

At the same time, the Austrian chancellor declared himself convinced that the veto will not have negative consequences for the national companies operating in Bulgaria and Romania. “A distinction must be made here: one is a security policy issue, and the other is an economic policy issue,” the chancellor pointed out, emphasizing that a possible boycott of Austrian companies would rather harm the economies of Romania or Bulgaria themselves. Austrian companies always bring money to the country’s budget and provide jobs, he explained.