All member states of the European Union are presently organizing various projects with the objective of sensitizing and mobilizing the European public against this danger from the Right. The Austrian contributions are varied, they include the scrutiny of textbooks for conceivably still existing racist and xenophobic prejudices. Austria succeeded in bringing the European observation organization against racism and xenophobia to Vienna. So Vienna has become a vital command post in the fight against these inhuman ideologies. Another lesson to be drawn is that we will never again tolerate that large segments of the population are marginalized economically.
Inhumanity grows in the swamp of economic and political crises.
The fight against unemployment is today still the central challenge of our time. Because, then just as much as now, the fear of job loss is the soil in which anti-democratic ideologies thrive. Ladies and Gentlemen, Many of you are visiting Austria again for the first time. You are visiting a country which, for more than two years now, is a member of the European Union. The European Union is the greatest and most important project of peace on our continent, and I am proud that an overwhelming majority of Austrians voted for membership in a national referendum in June of 1994.