Brussels, 05/01/2015 (Agence Europe) - A “popular initiative for withdrawal from the EU” was submitted on 17 December 2014 to the Austrian Ministry of the Interior by a cross-party peoples' committee after it received more than 10,000 signatures, Austrian media report.
Signatories are calling for a popular vote on Austria's leaving the EU because “almost every one of the promises made 20 years ago that caused voters to support EU accession have been broken”, states the initiative. “Instead of progress, we have witnessed the meltdown of Austria in virtually every area: higher unemployment, increasing state debt, a drop in purchasing power for the large majority of people, rising crime, almost complete loss of small-scale farming and environmental deterioration”, says the peoples' committee (our translation). It has already put down similar initiatives, the last dating from the start of 2012. (SP)