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POLITICS

FPÖ appoints 21-year-old to Vienna School Board

The Austrian Freedom Party (FPÖ) has appointed a 21-year-old law student, Maximilian Krauss, to the Office of Deputy President of the Vienna City School Board.

Published: 22 July 2014 15:16 CEST
FPÖ appoints 21-year-old to Vienna School Board
Maximilian Krauss on ORF TV. Photo: ORF

"We wanted to send a signal of renewal," said FPÖ leader Heinz-Christian Strache at a news conference on Tuesday.

Krauss succeeds Helmut Günther, who will move to Vienna's parliament to replace current EU representative, Barbara Kappel.

For Strache, Krauss's appointment is a sign that the FPÖ wants to "air out" the city council and "really represent the interests of students".

Krauss, who will give his inaugural press conference next week, is "the youngest district chairman of the FPÖ in Vienna" in Josefstadt, and was also a candidate in the last general election.

The right-wing FPÖ increased its vote significantly in the recent European elections, particularly among the under 29s.

Compared with 2009, the party increased its share of the vote by seven percent, winning a total of 19.7 percent.

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POLITICS

Austria decries fake blood attack at anti-Semitism event

Austria's minister in charge of Europe on Tuesday hit out at an "attack on our values" after a man threw fake blood at an anti-Semitism conference in Vienna.

Published: 8 May 2024 10:41 CEST
Austria decries fake blood attack at anti-Semitism event

As elsewhere in Europe, anti-Semitic acts have been on the rise in Austria since the war between Israel and Hamas broke out.

A man on Monday poured several litres of fake blood at the entrance to a building in downtown Vienna, where government, Jewish and civil society representatives were meeting to discuss anti-Semitism in Europe.

Police were able to prevent conference participants, including Austria’s minister in charge of Europe, Karoline Edtstadler, from being hit.

“It was not just an attack against me, but also an attack against our values,” Edtstadler said on Tuesday.

Chancellor Karl Nehammer also said the assault had “crossed the line”.

The man behind the attack told Austrian news agency APA that he was a member of the Jewish community wanting to protest Austria’s “normalisation of a genocide”, referring to Israel’s actions in the Gaza war against Hamas.

The number of anti-Semitic incidents in Austria has increased from an average of two a day in 2022 to eight a day since last October, according to the country’s Jewish community association that keeps track of such events.

That was the month when Palestinian group Hamas launched an unprecedented attack on Israel, which resulted in the deaths of more than 1,170 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally of Israeli official figures.

Militants also seized around 250 hostages, with an estimated 128 remaining in Gaza, including 35 the Israeli military says are dead.

That sparked war, with Israel vowing to destroy Hamas and launching a retaliatory offensive that has killed at least 34,789 people in Gaza, mostly women and children, according to the Hamas-run territory’s health ministry.

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