Austria is promoting a “hydrogen alliance” with the United Arab Emirates (AEJ), as Foreign Minister Alexander Schallenberg (ÖVP) propagated during his visit to the Persian Gulf. The emirates are more suitable than hardly any other country for such projects for the production of “green hydrogen” for the “post petrol era”, said the minister, for whom a meeting with Industry Minister Sultan al-Jaber on Saturday in Abu Dhabi will also take place Program stood.
The UAE see themselves as “Hydrogen Superpower”. In this context, Austria wants to promote an “Austrian-Emirati hydrogen alliance” with partners from the UAE with companies such as the mineral oil group OMV, which also holds 15 percent of the state-owned ADNOC (Abu Dhabi National Oil Company), the energy producer Verbund and the state holding company ÖBAG. Further visits by Federal President Alexander Van der Bellen as well as National Council President Wolfgang Sobotka (ÖVP), Finance Minister Gernot Blümel (ÖVP) and Economics Minister Margarete Schramböck (ÖVP) to the Emirates are to push this project, which was agreed in July, in the near future. However, similar plans are also being pursued by other countries on the Arabian Peninsula, such as Saudi Arabia and Qatar, with other partner countries.
Austria and the UAE have been linked to a strategic partnership since July 2021, which was finalized during a visit by Crown Prince Mohamed bin Zayed to Vienna. At that time, the hydrogen alliance was launched. The bilateral strategy initiative is not least the result of several visits by the Chancellor – Christian Kern (SPÖ) in May 2017 and Sebastian Kurz (ÖVP) in April 2018 and March 2019 – in Abu Dhabi. It has an urgent economic focus, but also includes an exchange in the fields of science and innovation as well as foreign policy, the fight against extremism and human rights.
According to NGOs, human rights violations have recently increased in the increasingly authoritarian Emirates. Both UAE citizens – they only make up around 1.1 million of the around 9.6 million inhabitants due to massive labor immigration – and foreigners have been arrested for critical statements and, in some cases, sentenced to several years’ imprisonment. Political parties and trade unions are seen as disruptive factors that divide society and are therefore prohibited. The media are considered to be government controlled and strictly censored.
However, according to diplomatic circles, the Emirates are trying to appear tolerant thanks to a targeted image campaign. It even has its own tolerance minister. In the religious sector, part of the campaign is the construction of the “Abraham House”, which is to include a mosque, a Jewish synagogue and a Christian church. In addition, the creation of a “National Human Rights Institution” (NHRI) is planned.
The background to the bilateral strategic partnership, which Schallenberg characterized as a “lighthouse project”, is primarily that the UAE are Austria’s most important trade and economic partner in the Gulf region. Austrian investments in the UAE amounted to around 7.6 billion euros in 2020. This puts the Emirates in seventh place in the list of the most important destinations for Austrian direct investments. 150 companies have branches there. The number of Austrians abroad who are in the Persian Gulf for professional reasons is around 3,500. Like other countries in the region, the UAE is trying to break its economic dependency on the production and export of oil.