The Klagenfurt SPÖ has terminated the coalition in the municipal council because of the – meanwhile discontinued – proceedings of the public prosecutor’s office against the Carinthian journalist Franz Miklautz. This was reported online by “Die Presse” and the “Kleine Zeitung” on Friday evening. Mayor Christian Scheider (Team Carinthia) no longer has a majority. The city of Klagenfurt reported the journalist to the public prosecutor.
In doing so, Scheider “finally crossed a red line and definitely ended the working agreement,” said the dual social-democratic leadership in Klagenfurt, consisting of Philip Kucher, SPÖ club leader in the National Council, and SPÖ vice-mayor Philipp Liesnig, in a statement to the “press” ( Saturday edition). “Scheider doesn’t enjoy our trust for another second.” It is Scheider’s “moral task” to ask himself whether he is up to the task, Liesnig suggested to the mayor in the “Kleine Zeitung” that he resign. NEOS and the Greens are also demanding the resignation of the mayor.
Scheider was directly elected mayor, his team Carinthia holds eleven of 45 mandates in the municipal council. He forms a coalition via a working agreement with the SPÖ, which has 15 seats, and the ÖVP, which has seven seats. According to the “Kleine Zeitung”, the SPÖ excludes a fixed coalition with another parliamentary group.
In his research, Miklautz had uncovered salaries and lavish overtime payments in Klagenfurt town hall using internal documents. This had brought him investigations at the Klagenfurt public prosecutor’s office for contributing to the violation of official secrecy, his mobile phone and laptop were seized. The case caused outrage and was criticized as an attack on press freedom. The Graz Public Prosecutor’s Office, in agreement with the Ministry of Justice, finally issued an instruction to stop the investigation.
The city apologized to Miklautz on Friday. “If he understood this action as an attack on his journalistic work within the existing legal framework or as an attack on press freedom in Austria, I am sincerely sorry. That was not the intention of the city of Klagenfurt,” said the mayor in a broadcast with.
Among other things, Miklautz had dealt with the director of the magistrate, Peter Jost, whose contract Scheider had extended at the end of 2022 to the end of 2025 by means of an emergency clause and who should have retired soon. In 2022 he is said to have earned around 270,000 euros gross including overtime. SPÖ, FPÖ and NEOS had protested violently against the move. So there had been a crisis in the coalition for a long time – the SPÖ had already announced in December that they could terminate the working agreement with the Carinthia team and the ÖVP. Liesnig also suggested that Jost resign in the “Kleine Zeitung”.