Animal protection referendum in Austria 1996

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

From March 18 to 25, 1996 the first animal welfare referendum was carried out in Austria . It was not initiated by collecting declarations of support, but by the signature of 35 members of the National Council of the Greens and the FPÖ , and was subsequently significantly supported by these two parties. Gerda Maties from the International Association of Anti- Animal Experiments was the organizer , who founded a non-partisan platform for this purpose. The aim of this referendum was to unify the nine, in some cases very different, state animal protection laws into a nationwide animal protection law that was as progressive as possible. Eleven months later in February 1997 it was postponed indefinitely, despite 459,096 signatures from the population in the National Council. The coveted goal of an Austrian Federal Animal Protection Act was only decided seven years later in 2004 after an intensive campaign by animal protection organizations in the National Council. The Federal Act on the Protection of Animals (Animal Protection Act - TSchG) finally came into force on January 1st , 2005.

requirements

The demands of this initiative included:

  1. The anchoring of animal and environmental protection as legal interests in the constitution.
  2. The establishment of an independent, publicly funded animal advocacy to safeguard the interests of animals in their welfare and to monitor the enforcement of animal welfare matters. The animal welfare advocate should be granted party status in proceedings under the Federal Animal Welfare Act.
  3. The recognition of animal welfare as a public concern as well as the ideal and financial support of animal welfare work by the public sector.

The animal welfare referendum in 1996 contained numerous specific information on how these goals should be achieved. In the text it was argued that legal uniformity, legal security and transparency through nine different regulations would be unsuitable to meet the needs of modern animal welfare. Their inadequacy is particularly evident in the unequal treatment of animals in the individual federal states. For example, the Tyrolean and Burgenland Animal Welfare Acts did not contain any regulation on the slaughter of animals. Fur farming was only expressly recorded in the Vienna and Carinthian Animal Welfare Acts and in the Styrian Intensive Animal Husbandry Ordinance. Minimum requirements for the area of ​​farm animal husbandry existed only in Styria and Vorarlberg (each in the ordinance). The maximum penalties envisaged were between a maximum of 3,000 in Upper Austria and 100,000 Schilling in Vienna, Carinthia and Styria. It would be hard to see why an animal should be treated worse in some federal states than in others. The fragmentation of the regulations into nine laws and several ordinances hinder the enforcement of animal welfare law. Before the vote on Austria's accession to the European Union, representatives of the Austrian Federal Government emphasized that Austria would play a pioneering role within the EU in the areas of animal and environmental protection. The implementation of this claim was called for in the animal protection referendum.

Reason

The concrete demands of the animal welfare referendum 1996 were also comprehensively justified.

Animal protection in the constitution

Without the constitutional anchoring of animal protection, it would automatically be subordinate to the constitutional principles - in accordance with the level structure of the legal system - so that in the event of a conflict there could not even be a weighing of legal interests. This legal situation would be unsustainable in a time of escalating abuse of fellow creatures (e.g. in genetic engineering). It was not least these considerations that prompted Switzerland to include animal welfare in its constitution and to give it equal status with other national goals.

Animal advocacy

The need for animal advocacy was illustrated with the saying “Where there is no plaintiff, there is no judge”. It has been argued that this ruling applies to the enforcement in the area of ​​animal welfare law to a particularly high degree. The massive and unscrupulous exploitation of animals in our society, which is committed to pluralism and balancing of interests, would not be countered in the field of animal welfare, which would be called to perceive the interest of animals in their welfare. The enforcement authorities, to which this function is theoretically assigned, would clearly be overwhelmed by this: in legal theory and psychological terms, it would be impossible to practice objective legal finding while simultaneously safeguarding the interests of a “party”. The injured “party” can be seen as the ethical and legal community as well as the injured animal. The institution of an animal advocacy therefore also fulfills a relief function for the authorities. The animal advocacy should counteract the blatant deficit in enforcement in the animal protection area by counteracting the extreme imbalance of interests by safeguarding the interests of the weaker. The establishment of the animal advocacy could be based on the model of the patient advocacy (§ 13 Accommodation Act, Association Guardian and Patient Advocacy Act), which has been exercising the rights of patients in judicial placement proceedings since 1990. The animal advocacy should therefore be granted party status in proceedings under the Federal Animal Welfare Act, since the deficit in enforcement de lege lata in animal welfare matters would be due not least to the lack of complaints and legal remedies as well as the denial of the right to inspect files. The legal institutions of the association complaint and the party position for the exercise of objective law would by no means be alien to Austrian law: Section 29 of the Consumer Protection Act and Section 14 of the Federal Act against Unfair Competition provide for certain claims to be asserted by interest groups, while Section 44 of the Cartel Act clears the public bodies mentioned there Legal party status in antitrust proceedings. In Switzerland, the collective action law that has existed since 1966 in the areas of environmental, nature and homeland protection would have proven its worth.

Public animal welfare promotion

Because the nine animal welfare laws that existed at the time had often declared the promotion of animal welfare to be a public concern, it would be time to demand action in accordance with this commitment. The federal government as (future) legislator in the animal welfare area and the federal states as executive would have to jointly finance the animal welfare advocate. For the time being, one animal welfare lawyer per federal state would appear realistic, whereby the area of ​​monument protection (state conservators, Federal Monuments Office) could serve as an organizational model. The vast majority of public concerns should not be passed on to private and voluntary initiatives. The federal government would therefore have u. a. To finance animal shelters, to subsidize the activities of non-profit animal welfare associations, to support teacher training in animal welfare financially and ideally as well as through legal measures, to promote animal welfare and this (e.g. using the animal welfare index conceived by Univ.-Doz. Dr. Bartussek ) through bonuses.

Result

area Eligible voters valid entries Voting participation
BURGENLAND 213.921 11,167 5.22%
CARINTHIA 418.120 18,773 4.49%
LOWER AUSTRIA 1,123,631 108,984 9.70%
UPPER AUSTRIA 976.702 58,983 6.04%
SALZBURG 347.060 27,239 7.85%
STEIERMARK 904.104 66,625 7.37%
TYROL 454,662 28,108 6.18%
VORARLBERG 222,479 12,657 5.69%
VIENNA 1,106,813 126,561 11.43%
AUSTRIA 5,767,492 459.096 7.96%

Since more than 100,000 valid entries were determined by those entitled to vote, the federal electoral authority determined that a referendum within the meaning of Article 41, Paragraph 2 of the Federal Constitutional Law in the 1929 version had been submitted.

Due to the high turnout, the animal welfare referendum was subsequently dealt with in the Austrian National Council .

success

Despite the popular support for the popular animal protection initiative, on February 26, 1997, the National Council postponed the motion to create a federal animal protection law for an indefinite period. The main demand of the animal welfare referendum was only implemented in 2004. Many of the regulations achieved through the Federal Animal Protection Act are repeatedly cited in retrospect as evidence that Austria has an exemplary animal protection law.

From the point of view of animal protection associations, there are still many aspects that need improvement. The VGT calls for example, the porkers "the big losers" of the federal Animal Welfare Act, because already much higher animal welfare standards have been considered in this area in some states before. In the course of national standardization, the animal welfare requirements in pig fattening were even set among the lowest regulations permitted in the EU, according to the association. This was made possible by a mistake in the translation of European law.

Individual evidence

  1. ^ All popular initiatives of the second republic. Retrieved June 26, 2020 .
  2. ^ Bleckmann: Tierschutzgesetz: The long way of the FPÖ to the goal. Retrieved June 25, 2020 .
  3. ^ Austrian Parliament: 171 of the supplements to the stenographic minutes of the National Council XX. GP. April 24, 1996, accessed June 25, 2020 .
  4. ↑ a b Federal Ministry of the Interior: Animal Welfare Popular Initiative 1996. 1996, accessed on May 31, 2020 .
  5. ↑ Legal information system of the Federal Chancellery: Federal Law Gazette authentic from 2004. September 28, 2004, accessed on June 3, 2020 .
  6. ^ Association against animal factories (Austria) : A historic day for animal rights in Austria. May 29, 2004, accessed June 3, 2020 .
  7. ↑ Legal information system of the Federal Chancellery: Federal law consolidated: Entire legal regulation for the Animal Welfare Act, version of 01.01.2005. January 1, 2005, accessed June 3, 2020 .
  8. ^ Austrian Parliament: First animal protection referendum. Retrieved May 30, 2020 .
  9. ↑ Thomas Fleiner: The animal in the federal constitution . In: Antoine F. Goetschel (Ed.): Law and animal protection, backgrounds - prospects . Paul Haupt Verlag, Bern, Stuttgart, Vienna 1993, p. 14th ff .
  10. ↑ Antoine F. Goetschel, Peter Wirth: Legal argumentation catalog for the federal animal protection initiative . Ed .: Swiss Animal Welfare - STS. 1989, p. 106 ff .
  11. ↑ Goetschel / Wirth, Juristischer Argumentationskatalog p. 122 ff
  12. ^ Austrian Parliament: First Animal Welfare Referendum - For the creation of a Federal Animal Welfare Act. April 24, 1996, accessed June 2, 2020 .
  13. ↑ Meeting of the National Council on February 26, 1997. February 27, 1997, accessed on June 2, 2020 .
  14. ^ Creation of a federal animal protection law. Austrian Parliament, accessed on June 2, 2020 .
  15. ↑ EU calls for "physically pleasant" floor for pigs. May 21, 2019, accessed June 2, 2020 .