Haider call for EU vote dismissed

The Austrian Chancellor, Mr Wolfgang Schuessel, has dismissed calls from Austrian state governor Mr Jorg Haider to hold a referendum on EU enlargement.

Mr Haider welcomed Ireland's rejection of the Nice Treaty in a magazine interview and called for a similar poll in Austria.

The former leader of the right-wing Freedom Party (FPOe) threatened to make enlargement an election issue unless the Chancellor agrees to a vote.

"The decision on enlargement will probably coincide with the next election so the people will decide," he told Austria's News magazine. "If Schuessel does not want that, that is his problem. It will be an election issue." But Mr Schuessel ruled out Mr Haider's call for a referendum as "not sensible" .

"I have nothing against a country taking a vote on something that concerns itself. But what I don't accept would be if we decided on the fate of others," he said.

Mr Haider's opinions were endorsed by Ms Susanne RiessPasser, the vice-chancellor and Mr Haider's successor as FPOe party leader.

She called for a direct vote on the issue, saying the government should not be afraid of including the people in the decision, and called for a binding referendum.

The FPOe officially supports enlargement, but remains one of the EU's sharpest critics. Fears of a flood of cheap labour from bordering accession states is likely to be an issue in Austria's general election in 2003.

Austria's Finance Minister said yesterday that the Czech Republic would not be able to join the EU unless a series of post-war decrees, under which millions of ethnic Germans were expelled from Czechoslovakia, were repealed.

"With the Benes decrees (in force), there will be no EU entry for the Czechs," Finance Minister Mr Karl-Heinz Grasser told a news conference in Linz. Mr Grasser, a member of the Freedom Party, described the Benes decrees as a "gaping wound" in relations with Austria.