Two tales from Austria

I’m interested that the Austrian justice minister Claudia Bandion-Ortner has disbanded a special unit of “political” prosecutors (German/Googlish) responsible for deciding whether to charge politicians suspected of offences. This is partly because of the revelation that the unit had effectively forgotten about a case against a former interior minister, Ernst Strasser, and allowed it to become time-barred (criminal cases are generally subject to time-limits in Austria). Another article in Der Standard explains that the unit had also come in for heavy criticism from politicians, who believed the unit’s specialist prosecutors were pursuing them with undue zeal (German/Googlish). From 2010, the most serious cases will be prosecuted by a new specialist corruption unit; otherwise, more ordinary criminal cases against MPs will be randomly assigned to generalist prosecutors.

I think this is interesting partly because the change has been decided by a minister, under pressure from opposition politicians – this is a not a story that inspires great confidence in the independence of Austrian justice or its ability to enforce the law against those with power. It’s also interesting because I can imagine politicians here arguing in other circumstances (Damian Green-type circumstances) that police officers and prosecutors working on these sorts of cases should be specialists, aware of the political and constitutional sensitivities.

By the way, Salzburger Fenster (German/Googlish) points out that Ernst Strasser seemed to be doing was directing public investment to localities – or not – depending on the party affiliation of the mayor. This is part of the so-called Parteibuchwirtschaft with which Austrians are familiar, and according to which all sorts of goodies – jobs, for instance – are routinely given to people because they are members of the right political party. I wish we were entirely free of that sort of patronage economy in Britain.

The second story, now. Because of compulsory retirements, two places are becoming vacant on Austria’s constitutional court (German/Googlish). The government has the right to nominate one of the new judges; the upper house, the Bundesrat, will nominate the other (the majority of judges, eight, are government nominees while each house of the legislature nominates three). According to Der Standard, the governing coalition has agreed that both vacant seats on the Court should go to the social democrat SPÖ.

Is that really the way to choose a consitutional court?