In The Land Where Cash Is King
Chancellor Karl Nehammer wants to put a right to cash payment in Austria's constitution
Servus!
It’s August and political silly season is upon us. Inflation in Austria remains above the European Union-wide average, rents went up at the beginning of August by 5.5 percent, and swathes of the southern part of the country were underwater last week following biblical rainfall that also flooded neighboring Slovenia. None of those things, however, top the political agenda right now. Instead, since last Friday, the whole country has been talking about a proposal from chancellor Karl Nehammer (People’s Party, ÖVP) to put a right to pay with cash in the constitution.
Nehammer cannot be given credit for this idea. Rather, as far-right Freedom Party (FPÖ) leader Herbert Kickl rightly and defiantly noted on Friday, the chancellor stole the proposal from them. The FPÖ has been pushing since March 2021 to add the right to cash payment to the constitution, and a couple of weeks back started a petition, “Fortress Cash,” to that end. Earlier this year, the FPÖ also threw its support behind a Volksbegehren, a popular petition, that opposed any restrictions on the use of cash. The petition attracted over half a million signatures.
Nehammer, then, is shamelessly hopping on a bandwagon the far-right set in motion. But as the half-million signatures indicate, he is also, like the FPÖ, playing to popular sentiment. In contrast to the Eurozone as a whole, where only 27 percent of residents prefer to pay with cash, 42 percent of Austrians say they’d rather use cash than card when buying something in a shop. That preference is cross-generational: 45 percent of Austrians aged 18-24 and 45 percent aged 55-64 go for paper over plastic. When asked whether the option of paying with cash is important to them, 73 percent of Austrians believe it is compared to 54 percent of Eurozone residents.
The idea of protecting cash payment via the constitution also relates to fears people have about the future of cash in Austria that are Eurosceptic in nature. In a bid to tackle money laundering and other cash-related crimes, the EU is currently looking at establishing a €10,000 limit on cash payment across the bloc. Member states would also have the right to limit lower limits if they wish1. The European Central Bank, meanwhile, is investigating the possibility to setting up a digital euro: a digital currency issued by the ECB and an electronic equivalent to cash that would circulate alongside paper money.
The far-right has taken these measures as evidence that the EU is trying to “abolish”—in the words of the FPÖ’s “Fortress Cash” petition—both cash and cash payment. Getting rid of the €500 note in 2019 was just the beginning, the far-right argues; these initiatives from Brussels and Frankfurt are the next step: “The ‘transparent’ citizen—unfree and subject to surveillance—is the goal of the Brussels establishment!” While Austrians have perfectly legitimate reasons to want to keep cash, including its simplicity and comprehensibility, here we see how, on the far-right, fears about cash form part of a larger, conspiratorial worldview.
Passing constitutional law requires a two-thirds majority in the Austrian parliament, and even with the FPÖ’s hypothetical backing, Nehammer is unlikely to find the votes if he tries to push a law protecting cash payment right now. His own coalition partners, the Greens, according to the Standard, weren’t even informed before he went public with his cash idea. Nehammer’s Sommerspiel, then, much like his March speech outlining his vision for the future of Austria, was not about the here and now. Rather, the chancellor is looking squarely ahead, thinking about the next twelve months and the long campaign before elections in 2024.
Bis bald!
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Many EU member states already have their own limits on cash payments: €1,000 in France or €3,000 in Italy, for example. Austria, like Luxembourg, Germany, and Sweden, has no cap.