Just weeks after the devastating floods in Lower Austria, €66 million in aid has so far been disbursed. More than 400 people in 573 Lower Austrian communities have been affected, and many more businesses and homes have been damaged, state governor Johanna Mikl-Leitner said Wednesday morning at the ÖVP state party headquarters, where the party leadership had gathered for a work meeting. . According to Mikl-Leitner, reconstruction will take “months” and in some cases even “years”, and the country is stuck together “across party lines”.
Yesterday, Tuesday alone, the state received 430 damage reports and 9.5 million euros were transferred in aid, Deputy State Governor Stephen Bernkopf said, adding that the intensive phase of damage commissions will certainly last for a few more months. “Now there is the first installment, if there are special circumstances, we will add more,” Bernkopf told media representatives.
Mikl-Leitner wants higher fines for those who “don’t want to integrate.”
Again, the ÖVP state party leader called for tougher measures for “those who don’t want to integrate” – an ongoing study of the integration fund shows that these are necessary, Mikl-Leitner says. People are “afraid of losing their identity” and we must resist this. Mickle-Leitner once again suggested that students and parents who do not wish to integrate should be penalized even more severely, with a minimum of 2,500 euros for breaching the duty to cooperate. Mikl-Leitner said it could not have been implemented with the Greens in the federal government, but “there must be an end to the misguided tolerance now.”
Apart from this, the state president named child care expansion, activities in the health and care sectors and the recently presented plan to renovate the state parliament hall as priorities. Mikl-Leitner welcomed the fact that the SPÖ had now joined the latter (“Better late than never”). The “Reds” had initially criticized the renovation costs, but the decision to select an architect was now unanimous.
Mikl-Leitner said the outcome of the National Council elections is not something one can be satisfied with, expecting “challenging and long discussions” at the federal level. Asked about his preferred coalition variant, Mikl-Leitner said: “We’re not on the playing field,” and now it’s the federal president’s turn. In any case, the black-blue alliance in the country is “not a model for the central government”.
