Health Minister Rudolf Anschober (Greens) is once again criticized for his Corona laws. The entire opposition and numerous institutions consider the planned tightening of exit restrictions, gatherings of people and fines for violations of the Corona regulations to be excessive and incompatible with fundamental rights and freedoms. The minister promises to respond to the criticism and take it into account.
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Last Wednesday, the Ministry of Health, completely surprising and unexpected, published a draft for amendments to the Epidemic Act and the COVID-19 Measures Act and sent it to parliament with a six-day period for review. The changes in the law provide, among other things, that meetings of at least four people can be rated and prohibited as an event, exit restrictions can be imposed if the disease is no longer controllable and if it is deemed to be “expedient”, and violations the provisions are fined with up to 30,000 euros.
The Ombudsman's Office, the Federation of Trade Unions, the Chamber of Commerce, the Bar Association and several state governments criticized the project in the course of the assessment. Protests also came from private individuals who submitted a mandatory statement to Parliament. As of Wednesday morning, there were more than 30,000 statements on the parliamentary website. The Constitutional Service in the Federal Chancellery reminded the Ministry of Health that the review period for legislative proposals “generally has to be six weeks”. Since the amendment was only allowed to be examined for six days, “a comprehensive and final assessment of the submitted draft law is not possible,” emphasize the lawyers.
Violent criticism came from the opposition. The NEOS think the draft is so bad that they are calling for this bill to be withdrawn completely. “Here the fundamental rights and freedoms are trampled underfoot. This amendment has to go back to the start. There is no other option,” said constitution spokesman Nikolaus Scherak in a joint press conference with health spokesman Gerald Loacker. “The shooting is far over the target here and that with fairly heavy artillery,” says Loacker. “The fundamental rights are not a salad garnish for good times, they have to be valid even in times of crisis.”
“It's enough,” said FPÖ club chairman Herbert Kickl to the government. “It scoffs at any description of how unabashedly the government tramples under the guise of health policy in order to satisfy its obsession with power, how unabashedly it persecutes people into the most intimate and private spheres,” Kickl and der were indignant Chairman of the parliamentary group of the liberal federal councilors Christoph Steiner. They called on the SPÖ and NEOS to once again jointly block the Corona laws in the Federal Council. There, the three opposition parties brought down the freestyle planned for January.
SPÖ health spokesman Philip Kucher identified an “expression of helplessness” in the targeted change in the law. Austria needs “no paragraph cavalry” and not “the 250th change in the legal basis since the outbreak of the pandemic”. The government not only has no plan, “it no longer even has a goal”. Rather, they stumble from lockdown to lockdown.
“We will comprehensively examine the statements on the planned amendments to the Covid-19 Measures Act and the Epidemics Act and consider justified amendments when revising the draft. We will forward the updated version to the parliamentary groups in good time before the health committee on March 18,” it said from the Ministry of Health on Wednesday.
