In the heart of Vienna, the main sites of Austrian political power could hardly be physically closer. Crossing the street is enough to cover the distance between the Baroque palace that hosts the Federal Chancellery and the far larger Hofburg Palace. It is in one of the Hofburg’s northern wings that we find the official residence and office of the Federal President. The occupant of the Federal Presidency, Alexander van der Bellen from the Green Party, has a mandate until 2028. His neighbor, Chancellor Karl Nehammer, from the center-right Austrian People’s Party (ÖVP), currently finds himself in a tough electoral campaign to remain chancellor after the upcoming parliamentary elections on September 29.
According to the latest polls, Nehammer’s ÖVP is projected to receive 24% of the votes, followed closely by the center-left Social Democratic Party of Austria (SPÖ), polling at 21%. The big election night winner would be the far-right Freedom Party of Austria (FPÖ), which would gather 27% of the votes. The FPÖ won an Austria-wide election for the first time last June in the European elections.
If the FPÖ comes out ahead, it will likely establish conversations with the ÖVP to form a coalition. The FPÖ will not necessarily be part of the new government, but keeping them out of power would probably require a three-party constellation, which would be unprecedented. What is sure is that an FPÖ win would put the far-right party in a strong position to negotiate its demands, such as completely halting asylum applications in Austria or turning back the clock on measures against climate change.
How Did We Get Here?
Contrary to other European countries such as Spain, France, or Germany, where the far-right has never held power at the national level, the FPÖ has been represented in the Austrian government on three separate occasions, the last one between 2017 and 2019. Their first government participation was in 1983, in a coalition government with the center-left SPÖ. Back then, the FPÖ was led by Norbert Steger, a relatively moderate politician by the party’s standards. The FPÖ’s first two leaders, Anton Reinthaller and Friedrich Peter, had served as SS officers during the Second World War.
Steger’s successor, Jörg Haider, led the FPÖ into new levels of electoral success on an anti-migration platform while remaining close to the party’s roots. Haider referred to Nazi concentration camps as “punishment camps,” addressed former SS soldiers as “decent people” and praised the employment policy during Nazism. The rise of the FPÖ, however, cannot be understood only through its anti-migration rhetoric or its unwillingness to denounce Nazism. It also profited from the specificities of the social and political system of the Austrian Second Republic, usually described as “consociationalism.” Under this system, the ÖVP, representing the business class and agricultural workers, worked closely with the SPÖ, representing the industrial workers. Although this cooperation limited social conflict, it also reduced the potential for political change, with decades of “great coalition” governments between the SPÖ and the ÖVP. In this context, the FPÖ was well-positioned to represent the idea of political change.
Under Haider’s leadership, the FPÖ was back in the national government in 2000, in a coalition with the ÖVP. Under the bilateral agreement, ÖVP leader Wolfgang Schüssel became chancellor despite having finished third in the 1999 parliamentary elections, behind the SPÖ and the FPÖ. To constrain the international outcry over the entry into the government of a party led by a Nazi apologist, Haider stayed out of the cabinet. The ÖVP and the FPÖ also signed an appendix to their coalition agreement promising to work for an Austria where “xenophobia, anti-Semitism and racism have no place.”
Even so, when the agreement was announced there was an uproar both in Austria and internationally. With massive protests in the nearby Heldenplatz, the members of the new Austrian government had to take a tunnel to cover the short distance from the chancellery to the presidential palace for the swearing-in ceremony.
A Long Way Since 2000
Austria, and the EU, have undergone major changes since 2000. One of Austria’s eastern neighbors, Hungary, has been led by Prime Minister Viktor Orbán since 2010 and is now the only EU country classified as “partly free” instead of “free” by the research institute Freedom House. Austria’s other eastern neighbor, Slovakia, has been taking an authoritarian turn under Prime Minister Robert Fico, especially after he suffered an assassination attempt four months ago. Meanwhile, to Austria’s south, Italy has had a far-right government led by Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni since 2022. Her party, Brothers of Italy, has neo-fascist roots, and Meloni herself once expressed admiration for Italian dictator Benito Mussolini.
Back in 2000, the 14 members of the EU other than Austria (which had joined the union in 1995) coordinated to restrict relations with Austria to an administrative level. The ministers of the Austrian government were not welcome to bilateral meetings with other EU countries. A similar boycott applied to Austrian ambassadors. Within Austria, there was disagreement on whether to approve the EU’s course of action, even among those who opposed the new coalition government. For instance, Paul Lendavi, a journalist and prolific writer on Austrian politics, described the sanctions as “hypocritical, unjustified and counterproductive.”
Also controversial was how the sanctions policy was terminated in September 2000, eight months after their introduction, in what could be seen as vindication of the new Austrian government. The EU appointed three experts, the so-called “wise men”, to review the EU’s approach towards the Schüssel government in Austria. The experts concluded that Austria had fulfilled the promises contained in the appendix to the ÖVP-FPÖ coalition agreement and recommended lifting sanctions, a policy that was soon implemented.
The FPÖ’s participation in the Austrian government entered a crisis in 2002. The reason was not the EU’s pressure, which had already receded, or the continuous weekly demonstrations in Vienna against the government. What brought down the government were tensions within the FPÖ. Susanne Riess-Passer, as vice-chancellor, was the highest-ranking FPÖ in the Schüssel government. Haider remained governor of Carinthia, his home federal state, but had given up the party leadership soon after the government was formed. After this, he undermined his own FPÖ colleagues in government. In September 2002, Riess-Passer and other FPÖ ministers resigned and Schüssel called for new elections. Voters severely penalized the FPÖ and the party dropped from 27% to 10% of the votes. The coalition with the ÖVP was renewed but with a much weakened FPÖ. Jörg Haider broke away from the FPÖ in 2005 to create his Bündnis Zukunft Österreich (BZÖ, Alliance for the Future of Austria). The FPÖ began its decade out of power after its 2005 internal split and the BZÖ progressively collapsed after Haider died in a car crash in 2008.
The Road Back to Power
Heinz-Christian Strache took over the leadership of the FPÖ in 2005. Strache, a former dental technician, had been an active member of the neo-Nazi scene during his youth. Starting with the 2006 parliamentary elections, the far-right party experienced a decade of uninterrupted electoral growth. After 2008, they profited from being the largest party in the opposition, with successive “great coalitions” led by the SPÖ. When a large number of refugees and migrants reached Austria in 2015, the FPÖ was ready to exploit the opportunity.
Running under the placard “Your Homeland Needs You Now,” the FPÖ candidate in the Austrian presidential elections, Norbert Hofer, achieved 49.7% of the votes in the run-off vote in May 2016. He was defeated by Alexander van der Bellen, from the Green Party. The election had to be re-run later that year due to procedural mistakes and Hofer fell to 46.2% of the votes.
By the 2017 parliamentary elections, where Strache’s FPÖ achieved its best results since 1999, the EU barely registered a reaction. The ÖVP leader Sebastian Kurz became head of government and the second ÖVP chancellor to invite the FPÖ into government. Strache was appointed vice-chancellor and the FPÖ obtained key positions such as the ministries of defence and interior.
In this period the FPÖ demonstrated troubling excesses in government. Interior Minister Herbert Kickl was responsible for some of the most egregious such as the February 2018, police raid of Austria’s main domestic intelligence agency, the BVT. Officers took possession of some of the country’s most sensitive information in open crates and plastic bags, honing in on the section of the BVT dedicated to the investigation of right-wing extremism, including organizations with close ties to the FPÖ. Although a judge had approved the operation based on a dossier of accusations against the BVT, ranging from corruption to mishandling of privileged information, the raid was considered illegal a posteriori by a court in Vienna.
During his period as interior minister Kickl also earned himself a dubious spot of honor in the Museum of Austrian Contemporary History. In the museum, a five-minute walk from Kickl’s former office at the interior ministry, one can see the sign for a reception center for asylum seekers — under Kickl’s order, the sign labeled it a “departure center” instead.
Chancellor Kurz called for the end of the ÖVP-FPÖ coalition in May 2019 over what came to be known as the Ibiza affair. Two German publications released a video recorded in the Spanish island in the summer of 2017 where Strache, then the FPÖ candidate for chancellor, together with party colleague Johann Gudenus, were talking to a woman they believed to be a Russian tycoon’s niece. The two FPÖ politicians promised to grant her construction contracts once in government in exchange for buying the influential Austrian newspaper Kronen Zeitung and using the publication to support the FPÖ.
“People’s Chancellor” Kickl?
Strache and Gudenus left the FPÖ, but Kickl weathered the storm despite having been responsible for the finances of the FPÖ at the time of the Ibiza video. Following the Ibiza scandal, the FPÖ experienced a severe election defeat and Kurz’s ÖVP entered a coalition with the Green Party in early 2020. In turn, Kurz would have to resign in October 2021 over accusations he had used public money to pay manipulated opinion polls in favor of his party. Karl Nehammer, also from the ÖVP, moved from interior minister to his current position of chancellor after a short transition period. Shortly before Kurz’s resignation, in June 2021, Kickl became the leader of the FPÖ. When he took over the party, the FPÖ was polling third at around 18%. While Haider and Strache were considered charismatic leaders, the same could not be said about Kickl. He was not known as a public speaker but he was the architect of many FPÖ campaigns, with rhyming, deeply xenophobic slogans.
These days, Kickl is in full campaign mode, styling himself as a future “Volkskanzler,” or people’s chancellor, a term used by Adolf Hitler.
The FPÖ profited from the ÖVP corruption scandals to rise in the polls. At the same time, Kickl was skillful in exploiting citizens’ frustration at the measures taken by the Austrian government to contain the Covid-19 epidemic. Kickl spoke frequently about a “Corona Diktatur” (“Corona dictatorship”) in front of anti-vaccine demonstrators, even recommending Ivermectin, an antiparasitic drug mainly used in animals, as a remedy against Covid-19. Meanwhile, in 2022 Austria recorded its highest number of asylum applications.
Campaign Mode
These days, Kickl is in full campaign mode, styling himself as a future “Volkskanzler,” or people’s chancellor, a term used by Adolf Hitler. In its electoral program, the FPÖ promises to build a “Fortress Austria” against migrants. Furthermore, the far-right promises tax reductions for families and entrepreneurs, and the removal of the tax on CO2 emissions. Michael Bonvalot, a freelance journalist and author of “Die FPÖ — Partei der Reichen” (The FPÖ — The Party of the Rich) argues that, for all its claims about being the “Soziale Heimatpartei” (social homeland party), the FPÖ is essentially a neoliberal outfit.
Whether the FPÖ is able to implement its program, or at least part of it, will depend on the possibility of creating a government coalition after the election. There are important programmatic overlaps between the FPÖ and the ÖVP (especially on economic policy), and the latter party has only ruled out a coalition with the FPÖ if Kickl were to lead it. To know more about what we could expect from a new government between the FPÖ and the ÖVP, I talked to Gabriela Greilinger, a doctoral student at the University of Georgia who focuses on far-right politics and political behavior in Hungary and Austria. In a coalition between center-right and far-right, migration policy could depend on which party controls the interior ministry, says Greilinger. If the ministry remains in the hands of the ÖVP, the Austrian government will probably focus on “working together with the EU and finding common ground for solutions there.” If the FPÖ takes over the ministry, though, they might try to stop processing asylum requests. Although Hungary has done so by pushing migrants to Austria and Germany, Austria has far more limited maneuvering room, notes Greilinger.
The EU Has Come to Terms with Far-Right Leaders
In recent years there has been a growing normalization of far-right politicians in Europe, with the criteria for deciding which far-right leaders are “acceptable” and which are not at the EU level increasingly becoming their position regarding Ukraine. Neither the fascist roots of Meloni’s party nor the severe infringement of migrants’ rights under her watch have proven an obstacle for the EU to accept the Italian prime minister into its fold. A key element behind this normalization process has been Meloni’s military support for Ukraine in its fight against Russia’s invasion. On the contrary, Órban, who has been obstructing EU funds for Ukraine until he secured concessions from Brussels, has faced more scrutiny and pressure for his far-right policies at home. Although Austria, like Hungary, is not a NATO member, the unanimity principle for major EU foreign policy decisions, such as those concerning aid to Ukraine, would give the country significant leverage.
In recent years there has been a growing normalization of far-right politicians in Europe.
What would be the foreign policy of a government with the FPÖ and the ÖVP? Bonvalot argues that different positions towards the Ukraine War could derail negotiations between the FPÖ and the ÖVP to form a government. The FPÖ opposes sanctions against Russia, whereas the ÖVP has voted for them at the EU level during the last three years. The FPÖ and Vladimir Putin’s party, United Russia, signed a Friendship treaty in 2016. Although the FPÖ has recently been saying that the agreement is null and void, there continue to be important ties between the Austrian far-right and Russia. Greilinger does not believe that different positions on the Ukraine War would be a deal-breaker between the FPÖ and the ÖVP. However, she notes that Austria’s foreign policy under such a government constellation would likely depend on who fills the position of chancellor. If the ÖVP retains the position, it “will likely continue their previous course on Ukraine.”
FPÖ ministers in the early 2000s had been relatively alone in the European context. By the time Kickl became interior minister in 2017, he was able to strike a good working relationship with Matteo Salvini, the Italian far-right politician also in charge of the interior file. If Kickl, or another FPÖ politician to circumvent the ÖVP’s apparent veto on the FPÖ leader, becomes the next chancellor of Austria, this would probably generate less outrage in the EU than the FPÖ’s entry into government as the junior partner in 2000. There is much to criticize about sanctions imposed by the EU back then, but at least they signaled that a red line had been crossed. It is harder to know now where the red lines lie.
