Furio Ferraresi - 28/06/2012

     Austria’s Finance Minister Maria Fekter has been causing Viennese diplomats no end of embarrassment with her constant gaffes at international venues, to the point where the tabloids now call her “Minister Long Tongue”. She had gained a certain domestic reputation as Home Minister for her strong-arm tactics against irregular immigrants and proceeding against Austrian citizens suspected of harbouring them without any regular search warrant. Progressive public opinion has been outspoken in criticism of her, protesting at her violation of the most basic civil rights.

     But her present outbursts about the European economic crisis and her ideas for tackling it have raised her to international limelight: she figures as a condensed mouthpiece for the cheapest anti-Mediterranean stereotypes. She created a diplomatic episode with her wild remarks about Greece quitting the Euro, such that even German chancellor Angela Merkel took fright and prevailed on the reluctant Austrian Chancellor Werner Faymann to rebut Der Spiegel’s allegations. The German weekly claimed to be interpreting some unequivocal comments by the Minister when it splashed the headline: “Austria warns Greece to clear out of the Euro”.

     Of course, Fekter claimed she had been misconstrued, but meanwhile she came under fire for fomenting the worst kind of Austro-German prejudice about the alleged unreliability and idleness of the Greeks and indeed the whole Euroland periphery. Jean-Claude Juncker himself recently had an instance of Fekter’s unsustainable indiscretion when she leaked to the press the content of important measures that the European finance ministers were still discussing at a meeting to save the Eurozone from speculative attack. Fekter makes no bones about sympathising with bankers, managers and financiers, just as she opposes on principle whatever European steps may be taken to keep tabs on banks, tax havens and dodgy foreign money in Austrian bank accounts.

     Lastly, the irrepressible Minister managed to nettle even the glacial self-control of premier Mario Monti, whom the Financial Times unhesitatingly styles “Europe’s last hope”. In a peak-hour Austrian TV newscast she came out with: “Italy may need help, but it is out of the question that she should end up completely under the EU protective umbrella. Italy must solve her own problems of high interest rates on her debt”. Monti’s laconic yet caustic ‘No comment’ was certainly more effective that indignant protests, but the whole episode goes to show what problems the Minister manages to raise every time she opens her mouth.

     Just when financial and economic issues are becoming crucial for the survival of the European project, one finds an Austrian finance minister systematically in breach not only of diplomatic bon ton, but the most elementary rules of community politics, incurring reprimands each time from the main European institutions. We have here a symptom of the grave identity crisis this country is going through. Ever since the economic crisis questioned Austria’s alleged virtues and quashed her dreams of counting for something in eastern Europe, a latent sense of guilt has been surfacing once more. In Austria this tends to blend with playing the victim, and the trigger is her own inadequacy when it comes to carving out a significant role in Europe and history.

     Austria is no longer so sure she is a haven of contentment, or that she belongs to the winners in this globalised world. As a result she feels increasingly hemmed and persecuted by imaginary enemies in the guise now of immigrants, now Greeks or Italians riding her gravy train. She even has it in for the EU: ‘if you’re not with me, you must be against me’. This is a form of paranoid manic-depression denoting a deep disturbance within Austrian society: incapable of growing, the Austrians unconsciously want to bask in the myth of their own security; they project onto others the unpleasant traits they sense within themselves, beginning with the idleness they so stigmatise in Mediterranean peoples.

     Austria cannot afford such facile repression of her historical traumas. What does need repressing in the sense of plucking out is the Fekter symptom. It would be a first step towards taking cognizance of and working through the trauma, which is a pre-condition for any real healing.

Furio Ferraresi