Paris/Vienna/Brussels, 11/09/2000 (Agence Europe) - While France announced, on Saturday, that it had started consultations with the of the EU Member States to "examine the conclusions to be drawn" from the Wise Persons report according to which the maintaining of bilateral sanctions by the EU 14 against Vienna, would be "counter productive" (see EUROPE of 9 September, p.3), several Austrian leaders have called for an immediate lifting of sanctions. Thus, the Austrian President Thomas Klestil asserted in Monday's "Kurier" that, on reading the report by the three Wise Persons (which we are publishing in its entirety), these measures "could be immediately lifted, this Monday, by telephone", while Chancellor Schüssel made a call to the EU 14 for them to "follow now, very quickly, the conclusions of the report", and that the Finance Minister Karl-Heinz Grasser had felt, in Versailles, that, as it "only took one day to impose the sanctions", only one day should be enough to lift them. If the sanctions are not lifted before the summit in Biarritz (13 and 14 October) or is they are only suspended, the referendum foreseen in Austria would take place, announced to the daily "Format" the President of the FPÖ and vice-chancellor Susanne Riess-Passer. As for the governor of Corinthian Jörg Haider, he told the press that the Wise Persons report is "a debacle" for President Chirac, and that "the Napoleons always loose at Waterloo".
"It is a matter of hours or days (…) whatever the decisions (…), it would not be satisfaction given to the party of Haider (..) it will be necessary to consider a monitoring mechanism and monitoring measures" (on this issue, see previous article), said, on Monday to the press the French Minister for European Affairs Pierre Moscovici.
The Prime Minister of Luxembourg Jean-Claude Juncker asserted that "we should rapidly put an end to these sanctions (…), and that really means quickly". As for the Danish Prime Minister Poul Nyrup Rasmussen, he felt that the sanctions could be lifted "in 24 hours".
At the European Parliament, the President Nicole Fontaine asserted that, if the report by the Wise Persons enabled to "unravel without compromises" this crisis, "it is the Union as a whole which will rejoice": European reactions have "without a doubt encouraged" the Austrian government to "avoid any act contrary to the founding principals of the EU and to contain pressure that the "extremist" component of the FPÖ could have exercised upon it", she said, while noting that the Wise Persons in particular denounce the attacks to the freedom to criticism" (the attempts, by the FPÖ leaders, to "reduce to silence, even turn opponents into criminals"). Mrs Fontaine welcomed two recommendations from the Wise Persons, aiming for the introduction into the EU Treaty of a provision enabling to "resolve in a preventative and appropriate manner" similar situations, and to give a more active role to the European Monitoring Centre for racist, xenophobic and anti-Semitic phenomena. The President of the EPP group, Hans-Gert Pottering, called for an immediate lifting, and not a simple suspension, of the bilateral sanctions, at the same time, he expects Austria to renounce to the referendum announced over the sanctions. The co-Presidents of the Green group, Heidi Hautala and Paul Lannoye, and the Vice-President of the group Nelly Maes said in a statement that the sanctions where possibly an instrument that could be challenged at a legal level, but that "we will never know how the policy of the Austrian government would have developed without pressure from the Fourteen". The Wise Persons justifiably criticise the Austrian Justice Minister, who had threatened to imprison for "high treason", some government opponents, including members of our own group, said the MEPs.
The European Commission President Romano Prodi underlined three points: a) the report seems to him to be of good quality, and he congratulated the Wise Persons for the speed and quality of their work; b) the
Commission feels that the "recommendations" by the three wise persons cannot be ignored; c) The Commission does not have to take any further position over these recommendations, as the sanctions have been taken by the "Fourteen", outside any Community decision or procedure, and it is up to them to decided what to do. The Commission could eventually comment on their decisions, at the right time.