TIROLER TAGESZEITUNG, leading article: "The big picture instead of the church tower" by Anita Heubacher

2023-06-20 22:00:15

Edition of Wednesday, June 20, 2023

Innsbruck (OTS) – 20 months have passed since the announcement that a soil protection strategy should curb Austria’s land consumption. It’s been years since Austria set itself the goal of ending 2.5 hectares of built-up land per day.

Austria still has no plan on how to be more careful with land. Nothing came of “clear targets” for the federal states and municipalities, as announced by the black-green federal government, or more precisely the Green Vice-Chancellor Werner Kogler. Instead, the resolution on the soil protection strategy was postponed yesterday.

The goal that Austria has set itself, namely to let it be good with 2.5 hectares of built-up area per day, is getting on in years anyway. Actually, it should have been reached in 2010, today we are at 13 hectares per day. 2010 has become 2030.

It is clear to the members of the Austrian Conference on Spatial Planning and now almost every child where to start: away from the church tower towards the big picture. If it is enough with 2.5 hectares used per day, you have to economize with the green field. Throughout Austria, and not just in your own community. You would also have to turn the control system. Because up to now, those were the clever communities that have preferably located the hundredth supermarket and the tenth commercial area on the outskirts, because they were rewarded by the municipal tax revenues. There are enough levers, but you don’t want to touch them.

The failure of the land strategy is a fine example of federalism in action in Austria. You don’t want to step on your toes and you don’t let yourself. The EU sets a goal that the federal government should then implement, which in turn bites its teeth at the states and in turn at the municipalities.

A binding requirement of 2.5 hectares per day would mean binding requirements for the federal states. They have different difficulties with restrictive land use. Accordingly, the resistance of the countries is larger or smaller. Lower Austria, Burgenland and Styria have used their energy to collect arguments as to why a binding key for the federal states is not possible at all, and unpacked the brakes.

In the federal states themselves, a binding key would have meant strengthening the overarching spatial planning and curtailing the competencies of the municipalities. You don’t look that quickly, because the reference to community autonomy comes around the corner.

To paraphrase our Bavarian neighbor Karl Valentin. “I would have liked to, but I didn’t dare.”