German, Austrian Chancellors MeetGerman Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder held a talk with his Austrian counterpart, Wolfgang Schuessel in Berlin November 21 for the first time since the European Union lifted the sanction against Austria.The 30-minute-long talk focused on bilateral as well as EU issues. Schuessel was attending the annual meeting of the German Employers' Union. Schuessel said after the meeting that the two countries must find compromise on the voting-power proportion as well as the size of the EU commission before the bloc's summit in Nizza. He also said that the eight-month-long sanction against his country was a "bitter episode." Schroeder said that the meeting was a normal event. Relations between Austria and other EU countries were frozen during the sanction which the EU imposed to protest the coalition between the Shuessel-led People's Party and the right populist Free Party. But in September, the EU decided to lift the sanction. |
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