Excitement about video
Austria’s Chancellor Nehammer advises children in poverty to eat McDonald’s hamburgers
Federal Chancellor of Austria since December 2021: Karl Nehammer
© Javad Parsa / NTB / AFP
A video is circulating on the Internet in which Austria’s Chancellor Karl Nehammer talks about child poverty and part-time work. He expresses his incomprehension of parents who cannot provide their children with a warm meal. There is great criticism of his statements.
The event took place at the end of July in the premises of a wine shop in Hallein, which Nehammer visited with other ÖVP members. In the approximately six-minute clip, which has been circulating on the X platform (formerly Twitter) since Wednesday evening, Nehammer begins to report on a discussion with “left-wing friends”. The question revolved around the question of how it is that people in Austria have less and less money, but the part-time quota is not increasing (Nehammer probably meant “decrease” instead of “increase”). “Not even for women who don’t have any care responsibilities. If I don’t have enough money, I work more,” says the Chancellor in the video.
Karl Nehammer: “Then we are in the GDR”
He then goes on to say that it is written that a child in Austria does not get a warm meal. What bothers him the most is that you don’t hear or read anywhere: “What about the parents? What does it mean that a child doesn’t get a warm meal in Austria? Do you know what the cheapest warm meal in Austria is? It’s not healthy , but it’s cheap: a hamburger at McDonald’s.” After all, it’s available for 1.40 euros, with fries for 3.50 euros, says Nehammer.
He denies that parents in Austria cannot afford this food for their children. You can still talk about whether it’s healthy, but then you have to “do something else.” “Only when we get lost in this discussion, and that annoys me massively because it doesn’t appear in the media at all, then we talk about the state economy. That means every parent has to register their child, we make calorie tables, we look at how much food “Will the child be born, how will it be fed? And then we’re in the GDR. That’s what the left-wing world looks like,” summarizes Nehammer energetically.
“We live in one of the best countries in Europe,” says Nehammer. When it comes to the question of how people are doing in the country, they are second only to Luxembourg. Purchasing power has been maintained and is even “plus” after adjusting for inflation, says the Chancellor.
In 2021, according to data from Statistics Austria, 368,000 children in Austria were affected by poverty – almost one in four children. In the spring of this year, Volkshilfe and Gesundheit Österreich GmbH (GÖG) published the results of a non-representative study that asked families affected by poverty about their situation in the previous winter. Half of those affected said that they could not adequately protect their children from the cold.
Criticism from Caritas and the opposition
Accordingly, Nehammer received a lot of backlash for his statements. Caritas President Michael Landau wrote via Ridiculing people affected by poverty serves no one. Poor people also have dignity and this should be respected, said Landau.
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The Chancellor also received criticism from politicians. SPÖ leader Andreas Babler wrote on X: “The Austrians deserve a chancellor who respects people instead of despising them.” Babler’s party colleague Eva-Maria Holzleitner agreed with him: “Nehammer has to apologize to women. Who does the majority of the unpaid work in this country? The list of reasons for part-time work is long. To add laziness is an insinuation and an impudence!”
In a statement to Puls 24, the ÖVP defended Nehammer’s statements: “We are, like the Chancellor, convinced that every child in Austria can get a warm meal if parents assume their responsibility, especially since we support families like never before.”
Sources: “The standard“, “Time“, “Pulse 24“.