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Christine Aschbacher, Austria’s resigned Labor Minister, at a spring press conference
Image: dpa
An alleged plagiarism also puts pressure on a minister in Vienna, but unlike in Germany, Chancellor Sebastian Kurz quickly defuses the crisis. The fact that the successor does not belong to the ÖVP party establishment fits his line.
JAustria is also now having its plagiarism issue, but the top government around Federal Chancellor and ÖVP leader Sebastian Kurz politically deactivated it as soon as it happened. Labor Minister Christine Aschbacher (ÖVP) resigned on Saturday, two days after doubts about the scientific quality and integrity of her thesis and then her dissertation became loud. On Sunday, non-partisan economist Martin Kocher was introduced as his successor.
Aschbacher stated that he wrote his work to the best of his knowledge and belief, but he wanted to protect his family from hostility. The Wiener Neustadt University of Applied Sciences, where the incriminated diploma thesis was accepted, announced an exam. But the passages, which were initially quoted on the blog of a self-proclaimed “plagiarism hunter,” bear witness to a certain linguistic awkwardness regardless of the question of whether they were copied without correct evidence. Outwardly, there was also an unfavorable image that Aschbacher, 37, presented his dissertation in May 2020, amid the first wave of the corona pandemic. Opposition politicians criticized that the labor minister should have drawn their attention to the resulting record unemployment rather than an academic degree.
