Punschkrapfen Duo – Club Bosses: “Learn to trust each other”

One party has been ruling for decades, the other has stepped to reconsider politics. What started four and a half years ago as a working group now ends as a civilian alliance with a learning effect. Spö club chairman Josef Taucher and Neos Club chairman Selma Arapović present a successful balance at the end of the shoulder-very-on-paper. But behind the figures there are also construction sites that are not that easy to smile away.

Most processed projects
“97 percent of our projects are implemented or underway,” Taucher emphasizes several times. Arapović proudly adds: “We have lived a transparency from the start. The government monitor was our promise to the citizens that we let our fingers look at our fingers.” 800 projects were at the start of the coalition – in the middle of Pandemie, as a mask obligation and uncertainty determined daily political life. And one more thing: “In the beginning it was a pure work coalition, we strangled ideologically,” divers opened openly.

Nowadays the coalition refers to transparency, pragmatism and efficiency. In fact, central initiatives were launched: from the Youth Work Foundation to care of offensives to school health services (“school nurses”) and the enormous expansion of photovoltaic systems.

Learning politics – from the opponent to a partner
But the political reality is not an annual report. While the coalition of successes in education, health and the labor market speaks, these fields are considered a Viennese problem area in public perception. Record unemployment among young people, acute education crisis, long-term care and medical shortage- the discrepancy between done work and public perception remains the wound of this balance.

Arapović points out that many measures take time to develop their full effect. “We have trained 5,000 nurses, 16,000 others are in the pipeline,” said Taucher. Both see the focus on the orientation of the solution as a strength of the coalition: “We are concerned with problems.”

Side against green ex-partners
The fact that regular meetings of the coalition of all people of all are almost banal. “At first I thought it just takes time,” admits divers. “But this weekly coordination created trust. We learned each other in this way to trust each other.” Arapović describes the change: “We Neos have grown up because of this legislative period. We have learned what responsibility really means.”

Divers also admit that the Spö has taken over modern structures “because the Neos asked for it”. That was not possible among the Greens. What had previously ended in a dispute with the greens became a matter of efficiency with the Neos. “With the NEOs we prefer to reach 92 percent than to exist with the greens up to 100 percent and ultimately nothing to implement,” says Taucher with a wipe to ex-partners.

When was the mood at the low point?
Low points? “It didn’t exist,” both club protectors insure almost too fast. Even the coalition committee, otherwise the escalation committee, “only served to eat together”. Critical topics such as the UNESCO World Heritage site or the Viennese energy discussion have always been actually resolved.

Look ahead – reserved with some
There are no official plans for a new edition of the coalition. “We must be strong enough for a coalition of two to get on,” says Taucher. Collaboration with the FPö excludes both categorically. Arapović emphasizes: “We believe that we can continue to make a fair contribution.”

However, unsolved problems also wait in the future: a health sector at the limit, integration and educational subjects that have long been chronic, as well as financial challenges. “The social area is the backbone of the city. When it wobbles, Wiggles Vienna,” warns Taucher.

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