Sebastian Kurz joins Tony Blair in an NGO combating towards xenophobia regardless of previous controversy
Austria’s former chancellor, Sebastian Kurz, has added a brand new position to his spectacular portfolio – he has been appointed co-chairman of a outstanding NGO that fights racism and anti-Semitism.
“I’m honored to hitch the European Council on Tolerance and Reconciliation (ECTR) as co-chairman along with Tony Blair,” Kurz introduced on Twitter.
The previous chancellor added that the ECTR’s mission to combat towards extremism and anti-Semitism, in addition to selling “higher tolerance throughout Europe,” have been “very expensive” causes to him.
The Brussels-based NGO was established in 2008, with its mission courting again to the Worldwide Stockholm Discussion board on the Holocaust, which acknowledged that the worldwide neighborhood shares “a solemn duty to combat such evils as extremism, racism, antisemitism and xenophobia.”
The tolerance watchdog is headed by the president of the European Jewish Congress, Dr. Moshe Kantor, who referred to as Kurz “precisely the suitable sort of chief.”
Commenting on the appointment, Kantor stated Kurz has had a “long-standing imaginative and prescient to combat extremism, racism and intolerance.”
Nevertheless, Kurz, who resigned as chancellor of Austria in October amid allegations of corruption, which he categorically denied, has been criticized previously for undermining this ‘imaginative and prescient’. In 2017, he entered right into a coalition with the far-right Freedom Social gathering, identified for its anti-immigration views – a transfer which made Austria the one nation within the Western Europe with far-right social gathering members holding positions within the authorities. Kurz additionally famously took a troublesome stance on the difficulty of refugees.
His colleague on the ECTR board, former UK Prime Minister Tony Blair, has additionally discovered himself on the heart of controversy following his current knighthood. A petition calling on Queen Elizabeth to strip Blair of his knighthood for “inflicting the loss of life of numerous harmless, civilian lives and servicemen in varied conflicts” has racked up greater than 1,000,000 signatures.
Regardless of the potential criticism, his senior position on the NGO marks one other milestone for Kurz, 35, previously the youngest overseas minister and chancellor in Austrian historical past. In response to media reviews, he has additionally landed a job as international strategist at US-based funding agency Thiel Capital, based by PayPal’s billionaire co-founder, Peter Thiel, and can begin working there this 12 months. These profession developments have come for Kurz together with life-changing private occasions. He and his long-term girlfriend, Susanne, have not too long ago change into dad and mom and are reportedly set to get married later this 12 months.
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