The NEOS celebrated the start of their election campaign with a big family party on Friday in the Herrmann beach bar on Vienna’s Danube Canal. In bright sunshine, party leader and top candidate Beate Meinl-Reisinger swore the other candidates, activists and sympathizers to the intensive election campaign: “We now have 37 days and half an hour until the polling stations close in Austria. 37 days until we have the chance for a positive new beginning in Austria together. The chance for a federal government that stops arguing, that ends the standstill and looks at what the people of Austria need instead of what is best for its own officials.”
For 12 years, NEOS has been showing “that we are not concerned with positions and our own advantage,” said Meinl-Reisinger. “We NEOS are not like the other parties. Maintaining power at any price is not on our agenda. To finally fulfill people’s expectations of politics again – THAT is our mission. Those in power have recently ignored problems – or even turned them into a business model. This type of governance must end. This way of governing will be over!”
According to the pink party leader, Austria needs “a force that does not accept that in a rich country like Austria, children are hungry and cannot learn. Austria needs a force that does not accept that people pay more and more taxes but receive less and less services. It takes a force that not only cares about ensuring that ‘its own people’ are taken care of, but also that all Austrians are taken care of. We are that force. The only independent and fresh force for reform. We fight for the best education and every opportunity for all children; for people to have more money left over at the end of the month; We are the only ones fighting to ensure that today’s young people still have good and secure pensions and for decency to finally return to politics. There can no longer be “business as usual”. There will be no “business as usual” with us. We must reform the country – that is our promise! And yes, maybe that’s a job only a woman can do.”
Schellhorn: If you vote for ÖVP, you vote for Kickl
Salzburg’s NEOS top candidate and third on the federal list, Sepp Schellhorn, also made it unmistakably clear at today’s start of the election campaign: “The other parties will try everything so that they can continue as before. They practice federalism and ffederalism for their own interests. We NEOS, on the other hand, will work to reduce taxes on work until people finally have 10 percent more net income and the economy is competitive again. We are committed to ensuring that Austria finally promotes what benefits the future and our location, and not what helps the parties. We have to say this clearly, not in a complicated and noble way, simply and clearly: If you want something to change, you can only vote for NEOS.”
Schellhorn also warned against another Ibiza coalition: “The FPÖ is destroying freedom and prosperity. The ÖVP denied and then made a coalition with this FPÖ in Salzburg. She denied it and did it in Upper Austria. And she denied it and did it in Lower Austria. And she denies it now. But when things end in the fall, the Ibiza coalition will come back. Anyone who votes for the ÖVP will vote for Kickl – no matter what Nehammer says.”