Two EU experts cycled through Austria, got an idea of the EU mood and compared it with surveys.
“If there are problems, the EU is to blame first.” The head of the representation of the EU Commission in Vienna, Martin Selmayr, cycled 2000 kilometers together with the Secretary General of the Austrian Society for European Politics (ÖGfE), Paul Schmidt, last year through all states. In their numerous conversations, they heard a lot of negative things about the EU, but also a lot of constructive suggestions for EU reform. They had these impressions compared in surveys and came across a clear gap in EU sentiment between Vienna and the federal states.
According to this, 56 percent of Viennese people notice positive effects of EU membership, in Lower Austria and Tyrol, on the other hand, the figure is just 35 percent. In no other federal state is interest in the EU as great and the attitude towards joint European action as positive as in Vienna. This also corresponds to the personal impressions of Selmayr and Schmidt. On their tour, they collected suggestions for the EU future conference and found numerous people to talk to with concrete ideas: nursing staff in Styria, for example, spoke out in favor of developing a European nursing strategy. In Carinthia they were given the wish to introduce a European climate ticket based on the Austrian model. They came back from Vorarlberg with suggestions for better border management in times of crisis and with the demand for simplified applications for EU funding.