Interview with Schieder

“We should protect ourselves better against cyberattacks”

Andreas Schieder has been a member of the European Parliament in Brussels since 2019.

(Bild: APA/BARBARA GINDL)

His EU election campaign tour took Andreas Schieder (SPÖ) to Austria. He spoke to "Krone" about the climate, Ukraine and migration.

Krone: In the 2019 EU elections, you promised to campaign for climate and nature conservation. What is your track record?

Andreas Schieder: Nature and climate were the big issues of this period. Many individual laws were passed. All in all, the Green Deal is an epoch-making step that shows that Europe is taking the climate challenges seriously, but is trying to answer the questions surrounding climate and nature conservation with social justice. The renaturation law, which creates infiltration areas, enables the restoration of rivers, creates recreational areas for flora and fauna and supports biodiversity, has unfortunately been prevented at the last few meters. The law has been passed by the European Parliament, but is being blocked - including by the Austrian Environment Minister.

Why is that?

I don't know. Better cooperation between the Austrian government and the members of the European Parliament would certainly have been helpful.

As a member of the Committee on Foreign Affairs, how do you view the EU's security and defense strategy?

First of all, it must be said that Austria is neutral and must remain so. I consider neutrality to be an important contribution to the European security architecture. Neutrality also opens up opportunities such as a stronger foreign policy. It is true that threat scenarios have increased worldwide. This is why strong cooperation and defense capabilities are necessary. However, this is not just about armament, but also about creating resources to be prepared for cyber attacks, disinformation campaigns and the like. We need to protect our infrastructure not only from drone and missile attacks, but also from cyber attacks. And the most important infrastructure is our democracy.

Austria can provide humanitarian aid in Ukraine and also send demining teams.

Andreas Schieder (SPÖ)

Isn't Austria making it too easy for itself when a war of aggression is launched against a neighboring EU country like Ukraine and only neutrality is referred to?

For me, being neutral means not supplying weapons. However, Austria can very well provide humanitarian aid and send mine clearance teams, for example. That would have helped the Ukrainian civilian population.

Other countries supply weapons - wouldn't a joint approach make sense?

Each country should act according to its constitutional possibilities with regard to arms deliveries. In the case of Ukraine, the responsibility lies with the individual member states. It would be different if Putin were to invade an EU member state, in which case there would be a mutual assistance pact - and this in turn would only be in accordance with Austrian neutrality. But we shouldn't be making hypotheses, we should be dealing with real threats. These are already happening in cyberspace through attacks on infrastructure, disinformation campaigns, troll factories and the like. We need to arm ourselves better - not with weapons, but with know-how.

What about securing external borders and a common migration policy?

So far, we have seen that external borders have been poorly secured and new internal borders have been erected - for example at the Walserberg. The migration pact now gives us the opportunity to respond to the challenge together and bring order to the broken system. I hope that the pact will be implemented and that there will be common external border protection and common standards based on human rights. This also includes faster asylum procedures, readmission agreements and a fair distribution of asylum seekers among all member states. Further steps must follow.