Federal elections were held in Austria on September 29, 2013. All 183 members of the National Council (Nationalrat), the lower house of the Austrian Parliament, were up for reelection.
The National Council is elected by proportional representation using partially open lists. For electoral purposes, Austria is divided into nine regional electoral districts (the nine federal states) and further subdivided into 39 local electoral districts. Political parties submit regional, state and federal lists; voters then cast their vote for a party, but they may also indicate their preference for one regional list candidate and one local list candidate. If they cast their vote for one party but then attribute their preferences to other lists’ candidates, only their vote for the party stands and their preferential votes are not counted. A statewide electoral quota, calculated by the Hare method, is used to allocate seats at both the regional and state levels; seats won by a party at the regional level are accordingly subtracted from its corresponding statewide seat total, and the remaining mandates come from the party’s state lists. Finally, all 183 National Council seats are distributed at the federal level by the d’Hondt rule; seats won by a party at the state level are then deducted from its corresponding nationwide seat total, and the remaining mandates are allocated from the party’s federal lists. A party must receive at least 4% of the vote or win at least one local mandate to secure representation.
Candidates may be ‘moved up’ the list through preferential votes if they win 14% in the regional constituency, or 10% in the state constituency or 7% federally.
The upper house, the Federal Council (Bundesrat) is, similarly to Germany, intended to provide representation for the states in Austria’s federal system. The 61 members of the upper house are indirectly elected by proportional representation by each state’s legislature (Landtage), with each state holding between 3 and 12 seats dependent on its population. Unlike in Germany, where the Bundesrat is rather powerful, the Austrian Bundesrat is weak and its powers are limited. It only has an absolute veto power over constitutional laws limiting the powers of the states, laws relating to the Bundesrat and treaties concerning the jurisdiction of the states. On other issues, it only has a dilatory veto, which the National Council can override easily. The weakness and near-irrelevance of the upper house in day-to-day politics has led to calls for it to be abolished or strengthened on the model of the German Bundesrat.
Austria’s party system
Between 1945 and the 1990s, Austria had a stable two-party system, dominated by the Social Democrats (SPÖ) and the conservative Austrian People’s Party (ÖVP). Since the 1990s, Austrian politics became far more competitive, pluralist, depillarized (like in the Netherlands) and unstable with the rise of the far-right Freedom Party (FPÖ) on the right of the spectrum and the growing weight of the Greens on the left.
Federal elections and government coalitions in Austria since 1945 (source: Wikipedia)
Austrian society was pillarized (similar to Belgium or the Netherlands) until the 1960s and marked by a “two-camp mentality”. The two main camps, the ‘reds’ (Social Democrats) and the ‘blacks’ (Catholic conservatives), were more than two political parties: they formed tightly-knit and highly organized social milieus whose influence extended to the social, cultural and economic spheres. There were well-defined ‘red’ and ‘black’ trade unions, radio/TV stations, newspapers, student unions, recreational organizations, aid organizations, youth and pensioner organizations and typical leisure activities (skiing for the right, football for the left). During this era, political allegiances were rather solidly set in stone – there were no dramatic changes in the parties’ results from one election to another, and the main parties won fairly similar results in elections between 1945 and the mid-1980s.
On a geographic level, state governments reflect this tradition of solid political allegiances. ‘Red Vienna’ has been governed by Social Democrats since 1945 (and, with the exception of 1934-1945, since 1919), who even held an absolute majority between 1945 and 1991 and between 2001 and 2010. The Social Democrats have also governed Burgenland since 1964. On the other hand, the conservative ÖVP has governed the states of Upper Austria, Lower Austria, Tyrol and Vorarlberg since 1945 (and, except for Lower Austria, the conservatives governed those states during the entirety of the First Republic, 1918-1934).
As a relic of this almost entirely bygone era, Austria still has the highest rates of political party membership in the EU (alongside Cyprus) – in 2008, about 17% of the electorate were members of a political party – compared to less than 2% in France and the UK and 2.3% in Germany. It must be noted, however, that Austrian party membership (specifically in the ÖVP) is often acquired indirectly through membership in allied organizations such as the Austrian Workers ‘and Employees’ Federation (ÖAAB), the Austrian Business Association (ÖWB) and the Austrian Farmers’ Federation (ÖBB).
One of the main hallmarks of Austrian politics since 1945 has been the concept of ‘Proporz’, the proportional representation of parties in the government, the public service and the nationalized economy in accordance with their share of the vote at the polls. Proporz was established at the federal level after World War II, as to prevent a repeat of the political polarization and class warfare which had destroyed Austrian democracy in the inter-war era. Proporz was intended to mediate differences and mutual skepticism between the two parties, by allowing all major parties a share of the cake and to produce political stability and post-war prosperity through close bipartisan cooperation.
The Proporz principle not only involved the division of cabinet positions between the parties in proportion to their strength and traditional ‘profiles’ (the Ministry of Agriculture as a conservative position, the Ministry of Labour as a social democratic position); it also meant dividing public sector employment and positions in economic chambers, trade unions or state-owned businesses.
Depillarization led to increasing discontent with the Proporz system. Ideological differences between the two major parties became increasingly blurry, leading to a process of depoliticization and vegetative and corrupt politics in which the two main parties alternated in power and divvied up power like baronies. Proporz created political stability and a strong democracy, but it also created and entrenched nepotism and patronage at almost all levels of the state. The rise of the FPÖ in the 1980s/1990s represented the first major challenge to Proporz on the electoral scene.
Salzburg and Tyrol, to be joined by Styria, have abolished mandatory Proporz at the state level and allowed for free coalition building. Vienna and Vorarlberg never had mandatory Proporz.
The Social Democratic Party of Austria (Sozialdemokratische Partei Österreichs, SPÖ) is Austria’s oldest party and the major party of the left.
The party finds its roots in the Social Democratic Workers’ Party (SDAP), founded in 1888 under the moderate leadership of Dr. Victor Adler. Socialists and workers’ movements, heavily influenced by similar movements in Germany, had begun meeting in 1874 but divisions between moderates and more radical anarchists prevented unification until 1888. The Social Democrats greatly benefited from the introduction of universal suffrage in the Austrian crown lands (Cisleithania) in 1907, becoming the second-largest faction in 1907 and the largest faction in the 1911. The Social Democrats operated in all parts of Cisleithania, even the non-German speaking provinces, and it supported a federal democratic state with minority rights and regional autonomy. This did not prevent the different nationalities to gradually form their own Social Democratic groups – for example, Czech, Italian or Polish Social Democrats sat in different groups than German Social Democrats. The Czechs split from the party in 1912, other groups followed with the outbreak of war and the eventual demise of Austria-Hungary.
With the Austro-Hungarian defeat in World War I in 1918, SDAP leader Karl Renner convened a provisional national assembly in October 1918 and proclaimed the Republic of German-Austria in November 1918. The SDAP won a plurality in the February 1919 elections to the constituent assembly, winning about 41% of the vote and 72 seats against 69 seats for their main rivals, the Christian Socials (CS). Karl Renner was confirmed as Chancellor, forming a Grand Coalition with the Christian Socials. Renner’s cabinet, which lasted until July 1920, introduced the 8-hour workday, workers’ councils, the creation of the Austrian Chamber of Labour and negotiations for a republican constitution which was adopted in November 1920. The SDAP, unlike the CS, were largely in favour of union with Germany (Anschluss) and the Republic of German-Austria’s provisional constitution expressly stated its intent to join the Weimar Republic. However, the Allies opposed Anschluss and, in the Treaty of Saint-Germain (September 1919), Austria was forced to renounce Anschluss and change its name to Austria instead of German-Austria. The SDAP were close allies of their German brothers, the SPD, and they hoped union with Germany would strengthen the socialist movement.
The SDAP lost the 1920 elections to the CS, taking 69 seats to CS’ 85 seats. Thereafter, the SDAP was excluded from government (the CS governed in coalition with the Pan-Germanist Greater German People’s Party) and remained in opposition for the rest of the democratic First Republic and was forced underground under the Austrofascist dictatorship (1934-1938) and Nazi rule (1938-1945). However, the SDAP dominated local politics in Vienna until the advent of Engelbert Dollfuβ’ Austrofascist regime in 1934, the so-called ‘Red Vienna’ era (1920-1934). SDAP mayors in the Austrian capital built large public housing projects (Gemeindebau) and provided social and health services which significantly ameliorated living conditions.
The First Republic (1920-1934) was a violent and fractious period politically, marked by an opposition between left and right – both politically and militarily through paramilitary organizations (the SDAP’s Republikanischer Schutzbund and the right-nationalist Heimwehr). In July 1927, for example, SDAP supporters protested the acquittal of right-wing paramilitaries accused of killing a veteran and a child; the chief of police, a former CS Chancellor, called on the police to breakup the protest, killing over 80 protesters. The SDAP’s intransigence aggravated the political crisis; for example in 1932, SDAP chairman Otto Bauer, leader of the party’s left-wing (Austromarxist), refused to form a Grand Coalition with the CS.
In February 1934, civil war (in Vienna and parts of Styria) erupted between the SDAP’s Republikanischer Schutzbund and Chancellor Dollfuβ’s authoritarian conservative government. Within a few days, with the intervention of the federal army, Dollfuβ put down the revolt and the SDAP was forced underground and persecuted by the government. The SDAP remained illegal until the end of World War II.
In April 1945, the party was refounded as the SPÖ and Karl Renner, with Stalin’s tacit approval, declared Austrian independence and formed a provisional government with the conservatives (ÖVP, ex-CS) and communists (KPÖ). Renner convinced Stalin to accept him as provisional leader of Austria, presenting himself as the only one who could reach an agreement with both communists and conservatives, and apologizing for his past support for the Anschluss (in 1938, Renner supported Hitler’s annexation of Austria). The Western Allies were skeptical of Renner, whom they viewed as a potential Soviet puppet, and held out recognition of the newly independent Austria until October 1945. The SPÖ was defeated in the November 1945 elections, in which the conservatives won an absolute majority while the communists won only 5.4% and 4 seats. The SPÖ remained an influential junior partner in ÖVP-led governments until 1966. These governments, fairly moderate, guided Austria through Allied military occupation (which ended with the State Treaty in 1955) and post-war reconstruction. The bases of the welfare state were laid, many industries nationalized and the communists were gradually entirely sidelined from the Austrian political scene. Crucially, the SPÖ chose to ally with the ÖVP rather than the KPÖ, and downplayed Otto Bauer’s Austro-Marxism.
The ÖVP, led by Josef Klaus, won an absolute majority in the 1966 elections and formed the first single-party government in post-war Austrian history. The SPÖ, however, returned to power only four years later, forming a minority government supported by the FPÖ. Bruno Kreisky, a former foreign minister of Jewish descent forced into exile by the Nazis in 1938, became Chancellor. A year later, in a snap election in 1971, the SPÖ won an absolute majority, which it held until 1983. Kreisky pursued a reformist-progressive agenda; on moral/cultural issues (decriminalization of abortion and homosexuality, moves towards separation of church and state, language rights for Slovene and Croat minorities), economic/social issues (expansion of the welfare state, 40-hour workweek, expanding employee benefits, gender equality in the workplace, 4-week paid vacation) and other issues (democratization of education, shorterning military service). He unsuccessfully tried to introduce nuclear energy in Austria, but voters narrowly rejected nuclear power in a referendum in 1979. Kreisky’s wide-reaching reforms came at a cost: under his chancellorship, the Austrian debt increased dramatically. His government increased spending (through deficit spending) in areas such as education or healthcare; Austria also had a large nationalized economy.
Economic woes, scandals, bungled policy decisions and the emergence of the Greens caused the SPÖ to lose its absolute majority in the 1983 election. Kreisky resigned and was replaced as Chancellor by Fred Sinowatz, who formed a coalition with the liberal FPÖ. Sinowatz’s short tenure (3 years) was largely clouded by scandals and the crisis caused by the heavily indebted nationalized industries. He resigned following Kurt Waldheim’s victory in the presidential election, having been highly critical of Waldheim because of his concealed Nazi past (he had served in the SA). He was replaced by Franz Vranitzky, who called snap elections for November 1986 when the FPÖ’s right-wing took control of the party in September 1986. The SPÖ sustained major loses in the elections but remained the largest party, allowing them to remain in power, through a Grand Coalition with the ÖVP. The SPÖVP Grand Coalition governed until 1999.
Under Vranitzky’s chancellorship, Austria entered the EU in January 1995, but Austrian neutrality – espoused since 1955 and the Cold War – was reaffirmed. During the Grand Coalition era, both major parties were confronted by the rise of the far-right/right-populist FPÖ led by Jörg Haider. Vranitzky kept his distance from Haider, denounced by the latter as a policy of exclusion.
Vranitzky resigned in 1997 and was replaced by Viktor Klima. Under Klima’s short chancellorship, a number of state-owned industries were privatized and cut several public services. The SPÖ suffered significant loses in the 1999 election, seeing their share of the vote fall to only 33%, although they remained in first place. Negotiations to renew the Grand Coalition failed, and the ÖVP, led by Wolfgang Schüssel, formed a highly controversial ‘black-blue’ coalition with Haider’s FPÖ in February 2000, despite attempts by Klima to organize EU opposition to such a coalition. The right blamed the SPÖ and the President for the EU ‘sanctions’ and questioned their loyalty to the country.
The SPÖ gained ground in the 2002 elections (but the main winner was the ÖVP), but remained in opposition. In 2006, the SPÖ suffered small loses in the election, as a result of a big scandal involving BAWAG, a major bank owned by the SPÖ-aligned trade union. Nevertheless, the SPÖ placed first and its leader, Alfred Gusenbauer, became Chancellor in an uneasy Grand Coalition with the ÖVP. The Grand Coalition barely lasted two years, wracked by consistent disagreements between the two partners and Gusenbauer’s weak leadership. New elections were held in September 2008, and both the SPÖ and ÖVP suffered substantial loses – the SPÖ lost 6.1% of its vote share, winning a paltry 29.3%, although it remained in first place. Lacking any other realistic options, the SPÖVP Grand Coalition retained power, with SPÖ leader Werner Faymann becoming Chancellor. This time, the SPÖVP coalition has managed to survive its full term, despite some policy disagreements between the two partners.
Austria’s economy has performed relatively well in the past years, again in contrast with other troubled EU economies. Close ties to Germany and a traditionally prosperous economy. GDP growth has been positive since 2010, although it slowed to 0.9% in 2012 and is projected to stand at 0.4% in 2013. Growth, however, should pick up again in 2014. Unemployment is very low, at 4%. The country’s deficit, at 2.5% of GDP, is below EU guidelines and the government is projecting a return to fiscal balance in 2016.
Faymann’s government has received some international attention for his Keynesian policies, although the SPÖVP government also adopted austerity measures, most recently in March 2012. Faymann’s government pushed through work-training legislation which provided strong unemployment benefits and guaranteed paid training internships for young apprentices.
In 2012, the government adopted an austerity package worth €27.9 billion in tax increases and spending cuts (pensions, public sector, sector subsidies). This followed the loss of Austria’s Triple-A credit rating in January 2012. In June 2013, however, the coalition announced a €1.59 billion stimulus package for the next 3.5 years (until 2016), on the heels of the insolvency of Alpine Bau, Austria’s second-largest construction company. Without dropping its objective to reach fiscal balance in 2016, the government’s stimulus package envisions bringing forward public works projects and promoting housing construction.
The SPÖ is a traditional European social democratic party, although perhaps a bit more left-wing than other social democratic parties whose shifts towards the centre have been even more pronounced. The SPÖ says that they are the party of social justice, and their 2013 platform was fairly left-leaning.
One of the SPÖ’s main planks this year was a much-debated proposal to introduce a “millionaire’s tax” (estate, inheritance and gift taxes, 0.5%-1% levy) on all wealth and inheritances in excess of €1 million. The SPÖ argues that its tax proposals would fund concomitant tax reductions on labour incomes and provide €2-3 billion in revenues to fund the welfare state. The Social Democrats claim that the tax is also a fair contribution from the wealthiest Austrians, and a tool to fight income inequality. The SPÖ also advocated for higher contributions to the healthcare system from higher-income voters.
The SPÖ also wished to extend an existing bank levy to help pay for embattled lender Hypo Alpe Adria.
The SPÖ’s labour and social policies included calls for more investments in community housing, increasing the minimum wage in regulated industries to €1,500/month (there is no national minimum wage, collective bargaining in regulated industries currently set a minimum wage of €1,000/month), AMS (Austrian Labour Market Service) support for groups particularly affected by unemployment (elderly, health impaired, beginners, those with inappropriate or inadequate qualifications), expanding and improving childcare, proving paid paternity leave (for a month).
The party also opposes equalizing the retiring age for men and women (women may retire at 60 instead of 65 for men) before the scheduled timeline of 2024-2033. The different retirement age, the party argues, is compensation for the social, family and economic burden of women.
On educational issues, the SPÖ proposed lengthening compulsory education until the age of 18 (currently 15) and it has supported the creation of ‘new secondary schools’ for students between the ages of 10 and 14; these are to be new common, comprehensive schools which will replace lower secondary schools; the aim is to eliminate the separation of children into educational avenues too early on. The SPÖ opposes tuition fees in university, and, alongside the Greens and FPÖ, voted to abolish tuition fees in 2008 (that law was overturned and the SPÖVP failed to reach an agreement by the court’s deadline, creating a mess). The SPÖ also proposed introducing an Austria-wide training fund for apprentices to provide financial incentives to companies excelling in the training of young apprentices.
The SPÖ is traditionally pro-European. However, in 2008, SPÖ leaders Werner Faymann and Alfred Gusenbauer, in an open letter to the very popular Eurosceptic and populist newspaper Kronen Zeitung, said that any further modifications of EU treaties which would affect Austrian treaties would need to be ratified by the Austrian electorate. Seemingly, they have dropped that posturing since then…
The SPÖ and ÖVP crossed swords recently on the issue of the draft (compulsory 6-month military service or alternative civilian service), which was decided by voters in a referendum in January 2013. The SPÖ’s leadership, including Faymann, supported abolishing the draft and creating a professional army. However, the proposal divided the SPÖ itself (the governors of Salzburg and Styria gave tacit support to the status-quo) and proved unpopular with (older) voters, who appreciate draftees’ roles in emergency/disaster relief efforts and who were concerned about defending Austrian neutrality. With about 49% of voters turning out, nearly 60% voted in favour of the draft. The issue is dead for the moment and did not feature in the electoral campaign.
The Austrian People’s Party (Österreichische Volkspartei, ÖVP) is Austria’s main centre-right party, founded in 1945.
Although the ÖVP is a post-war creation, it is the clear successor of the Christian Social Party (Christlichsoziale Partei, CS), founded in 1891. The Christian Socials were a clerical-conservative party which originally opposed capitalism, liberalism and consistently opposed socialism. Besides clericalism and, later, close ties to the Catholic Church, the CS came to be strongly associated with political anti-Semitism (although it was by no means the sole preserve of the CS). The CS used strongly anti-Semitic rhetoric in its early denunciations of capitalism and tied their liberal and later socialist enemies to ‘the Jews’. The CS’ original policies were not, ironically, all that far removed from the Social Democrats: they both were anti-capitalist, competed for working-class support and promised social reforms. The CS’ social agenda was strongly influenced by the Papal encylical Rerum Novarum. In their early years, the CS received a cool reception from the old elites and even some of the Church hierarchy.
However, after World War I, the CS emerged as the dominant Catholic conservative party. The CS won the 1920 elections, and thereafter became the dominant force in federal politics until 1934/1938. The CS governed in coalition with the pan-German GDVP and the agrarian Landbund; however, during the 1920s and 1930s, the CS opposed Anschluss (union with Germany), having been naturally reluctant to join Catholic Austria with predominantly Protestant and Prussian-dominated Germany. During the First Republic, the CS built a strong base of support through an alliance with the Catholic Church and leading Austrian industrialists. The Heimwehr, a right-wing paramilitary group, was also a part of this ‘system’; although they were a diverse group, with the Styrian and Carinthian groups eventually leaning towards the Nazis, they came to be closely identified with the CS (or the pan-Germanists) and the CS strengthened them as a de facto ideological military. The CS’ leader for most of this era was Ignaz Seipel, a Catholic prelate who served as Chancellor between 1922 and 1924 and 1926 and 1929.
The CS suffered major loses in the 1930 elections (-12.6%), losing votes to the pan-Germanists, the Heimatblock (political wing of the Heimwehr) and the Austrian Nazis. Following substantial Nazi gains and CS loses in regional elections in 1932, Karl Buresch’s government resigned and the President called upon his young agriculturte minister, Engelbert Dollfuβ, to form a cabinet in May 1932. During the Great Depression, CS leaders (including Ignaz Seipel), on the basis of the Papal encyclical Quadragesimo Anno, came to favour the implementation of a corporatist government modelled on Italian fascism. In March 1933, faced with the Depression, Hitler’s accession to power in Berlin and domestic political violence and instability, Dollfuβ took advantage of a procedural crisis in the Nationalrat to suspend the legislature and subsequently barred its members from reconvening.
Henceforth, Dollfuβ ruled by decree and granted his government authoritarian powers. The government censored the press, arrested opponents and quickly dissolved the SDAP’s Republikanischer Schutzbund, the Communist Party and the Austrian NSDAP. In September 1933, the CS and other nationalist groups merged into the Fatherland Front (Vaterländische Front) which became the authoritarian ruling party. Following the Austrian Civil War in February 1934, Dollfuβ’ government banned the SDAP.
In May 1934, Dollfuβ promulgated the May Constitution, which created the so-called ‘Ständestaat‘ (Corporative State). This period has come to be referred to by some as Austrofascism. Dollfuβ’ ideology and his regime was strongly influenced by Italian fascism (corporatism) but also from traditional Austrian political Catholicism (which entailed a strong opposition to Anschluss and union with Protestant Germany); Austrofascism bears strong resemblance to António de Salazar’s Portuguese Estado Novo, Miguel Primo de Rivera’s 1920s dictatorship in Spain and, later, the first decades Francisco Franco’s regime in Spain.
Dollfuβ’ main goal was preserving Austrian independence and fighting Hitler’s expansionist designs over his native country. Rhetorically, Austrofascism promoted a clerical view of Austrian nationalism which emphasized Austria as a ‘better German nation’ and drew a clear line between Catholic Austria and largely Protestant Germany. In practical terms, Dollfuβ found a strong ally in Italy’s Benito Mussolini. Prior to 1936, Italian relations with Nazi Germany were fairly cool, notably because Rome was hostile to the idea of Anschluss and wanted to preserve Austrian independence as to provide it with a weak buffer state.
Dollfuβ was assassinated by Austrian Nazis in July 1934, but the Nazi coup attempt failed – in large part because a furious Mussolini threatened war with Germany if Hitler invaded Austria. Hitler stood down, and Dollfuβ was succeeded by Kurt Schuschnigg. Schuschnigg sought to defend Austrian independence by seeking Italian backing, but by 1936, with Rome moving closer and closer to Berlin after the Ethiopian invasion, Vienna lost its main ally and Schuschnigg was forced to give in to Hitler’s successive demands (amnesty for imprisoned Nazis, including Nazis in cabinet, appointing Austrian Nazi leader Arthur Seyss-Inquart as interior minister etc). In February-March 1938, Schuschnigg tried last-ditch attempts to salvage Austrian independence, but to no avail. Schuschnigg was unwilling to put up any resistance when Hitler demanded his resignation and replacement by Seyss-Inquart. Austria was quickly annexed by the Third Reich and Schuschnigg, among others, sent to concentration camps.
The post-war ÖVP was the clear successor of the Christian Socials, with the important difference that the ÖVP rejected authoritarianism and anti-Semitism. The ÖVP eventually became a traditional post-war European Christian democratic party, which embraced parliamentary democracy and gradually became less sectarian. The ÖVP became the strongest party in the Nationlrat following the 1945 elections, and held the chancellorship until 1970 – in coalition with their former sworn enemies, the Social Democrats, until 1966. Under the Grand Coalition, the Austrian ‘social partnership’ model – the elaboration and formulation of social and economic policy in close collaboration with social partners – was entrenched.
The ÖVP went through a long and tortuous period in opposition, federally, between 1970 and 1986. The ÖVP reentered government, as the SPÖ’s junior partner, following the 1986 elections, a role it kept until 1999. However, during this period, the ÖVP, badly hurt by the rise of Haider’s far-right FPÖ, saw its support drop by well over 10 points. In the 1999 elections, the ÖVP placed third behind the SPÖ and FPÖ, with 26.9%. Nevertheless, after SPÖ-ÖVP talks failed, ÖVP leader Wolfgang Schüssel formed a controversial governing coalition with Haider’s FPÖ. The formation of a coalition with a far-right party led to EU ‘sanctions’ on Austria (mostly a concerted boycott of the Austrian government). However, the ‘sanctions’ failed and largely had the opposite effect: many Austrians were alienated from the EU and rallied behind Schüssel. In the 2002 elections, the ÖVP cashed in on this phenomenon and the collapse of the FPÖ, increasing its vote share by over 15 points and winning 42.3%, its best result in years. Schüssel continued his coalition with a weakened FPÖ, later BZÖ. His government was marked by a strong economy, privatizations, a major pension reform including pension cuts and an increase in the retirement age and tough new immigration/integration policies. Today, the Schüssel government has been increasingly tainted by revelations of corruption scandals involving former ÖVP and FPÖ/BZÖ ministers.
In an unpleasant surprise for the party, the ÖVP placed a close second behind the Social Democrats in 2006, with 34.3% of the vote. The ÖVP resigned itself to becoming the junior partner in a Grand Coalition with the SPÖ, which collapsed after a bit more than two years. Like their governing partner, the ÖVP suffered major loses in the 2008 elections, falling to a record low 26%, down 8.4% since 2006.
The ÖVP’s leader since 2011 has been Michael Spindelegger, the Vice-Chancellor and Foreign Minister. The ÖVP also holds the important portfolios of finance, interior and justice.
The ÖVP is, as aforementioned, a run-of-the-mill Christian democratic centre-right party. It emphasizes traditional Christian democratic values such as the social market economy (which the ÖVP rebranded, in the 1990s, as the ‘eco-social market economy’ to highlight a preoccupation with environmental issues) and support for European integration, as well as broader centre-right themes such as freedom, responsibility, rule of law and subsidiarity.
The ÖVP campaigned hard against “Faymann’s taxes” (particularly the millionaire’s tax), highlighting the fact that Austria already has one of the highest tax burdens in the OECD (48.9%, fifth place), and that further taxes would create an additional burden on the middle-class and hinder the country’s economic competitiveness (a claim which the SPÖ roundly denies). The ÖVP often claims that foreign companies are turning away from Austria or outsourcing jobs because of the tax burden (despite the fact that the ÖVP has been in power since 1987). Instead, the ÖVP says it wants to lower taxes with the aim of pushing the tax burden below 40%. They proposed to introduce a tax-free allowance of €7,000 per child and a child tax credit.
The ÖVP, like the SPÖ, wishes to balance the budget by 2016, but it prefers to balance the budget through spending cuts rather than tax increases.
On economic policy, the ÖVP’s platform focused on simplifying business creation, job creation (42,000 by 2018), reducing bureaucracy and reducing regulations. One of their main proposals was flexible working hours, and a more flexible retirement model to allow seniors to remain active in the labour force longer if they wished to do so. On the whole, the economy – particularly ‘restoring’ the country’s competitiveness, promoting entrepreneurship (especially among the youth) – played a prominent role in the party’s campaign, which sought to paint itself as the party for “hard-working citizens” or promoted Austria as the “land of explorers” in campaign posters which looked like tourism campaigns.
Another point of contention with the SPÖ in this campaign was the equalization of men and women retirement ages: the left sticks to the long-term timeline (2024-2033), while the ÖVP wants to bring it forward immediately.
The ÖVP recognizes the role the government has to play in ensuring social cohesion and providing a social safety net, but they feel that such safety nets create dependency. The party proposed to introduce means-testing for social benefits and sanctions for beneficiaries who, for example, turned down a job opportunity. The party also seeks to strengthen the voluntary sector.
On education policy, the ÖVP supports the current two-tier system for general secondary education (grades 5-8), while the SPÖ and the Greens tend to favour a comprehensive school system. The party’s platform proposed to make the second year of kindergarten free but also mandatory for children with learning deficits. On post-secondary education, the party has clashed with the SPÖ numerous times in the past years over the issue of tuition fees – the ÖVP favours reintroducing them.
The Freedom Party of Austria (Freiheitliche Partei Österreichs, FPÖ), a far-right or right-populist grouping, is probably Austria’s most famous and most polarizing and controversial party.
The FPÖ was founded in 1956, but it is the post-war incarnation of the old German national-liberal or German nationalist ‘camp’ (lager) in Austrian politics, which was born following the 1848 Revolutions. In the multiethnic Austro-Hungarian Empire, German national-liberal advocated for the union of German-speaking peoples in a single, Greater Germany. The German liberal base – the anti-clerical intelligentsia and middle-classes of German Austria – feared that they would be overwhelmed by Slavic peoples in the Austro-Hungarian empire. The German national movement emerged in 1879, following the collapse of the hitherto dominant but increasingly moribund and stale German Liberal Party.
These ideas were expressed by numerous leading German Austrian politicians – future SDAP founder Victor Adler and radical German nationalist and anti-Semite Georg von Schönerer – in the 1882 Linz Program, which opposed ‘attempts to convert Austria into a Slavic state’, defended German as the official language and proposed ‘splitting off’ ‘foreign’ regions such as Galicia, Bukovina and Dalmatia to retain only the core German crown lands of Austria, Bohemia and Moravia which would, they hoped, become part of the Greater Germany. Many of Georg von Schönerer’s erstwhile followers abandoned him, but his pan-Germanism, rabid anti-Semitism and fiery opposition to political Catholicism (he founded the ‘Away from Rome!’ movement advocating conversion to Lutheranism) had a deep influence on Adolf Hitler years later. The German nationals were some of those who lost out with the introduction of universal suffrage in 1907, but they retained a significant electoral presence in several German-speaking regions of Cisleithania including Carinthia and Styria.
In the inter-war era, the Greater German People’s Party (Großdeutsche Volkspartei, GDVP) was the largest pan-Germanist party, although the agrarian Landbund expressed similar opinions. The GDVP advocated for Anschluss, free trade, the creation of Volksgemeinschaft and was still rabidly anti-Semitic. They governed in coalition with the CS between 1921 and 1929, while the Landbund remained in most CS-led governments until the official end of the First Republic and the advent of Austrofascism in 1933. After 1930, the GDVP, like the DNVP in Germany, lost significant support to the Nazis and most GDVP members went on to join the NSDAP after the Anschluss in 1938.
World War II discredited pan-German ideas (guilt by association), and Austria developed its own national identity – one which was in good part built around the “first victim” idea – Austria as the first, unwilling, victim of Nazism; a controversial concept to this day which many say has allowed Austrians to wash their hands of any responsibility in relation to Nazi atrocities, in which Austrian citizens partook. Regardless, most Austrians identify as Austrians today rather than as Germans, and even within the FPÖ, pan-Germanists form only a small minority. Nevertheless, the FPÖ has retained some of the ideological markers of German nationalism (notably opposition to non-German minorities, such as Carinthian Slovenes) and some politicians retain close ties to German nationalist student fraternities (Burschenschaften).
The FPÖ’s direct predecessor was the short-lived Federation of Independents (Verband der Unabhängigen, VdU) founded in 1949, winning 11.7% of the vote in the second post-war election in the Second Republic. In the 1945 election, about 500,000-700,000 ex-Nazis were barred from voting, but they regained their voting rights in the 1949 election. The VdU, a national-liberal and ‘third camp’ party, won most of their votes. The VdU also recruited former Nazi officers, including Luftwaffe colonel Gordon Gollob and Waffen SS Obersturmführer Friedrich Peter. However, ex-Nazis did not only flow to the ‘third camp’ – a significant number joined the SPÖ, ÖVP and even KPÖ. In 1970, SPÖ Chancellor Bruno Kreisky’s first cabinet ran into controversy because it included four former NSDAP members, one of whom (agriculture minister Hans Öllinger) was forced to resign. That same year, Kreisky – despite being of Jewish descent and having been forced to flee into exile in 1938 – strongly defended Friedrich Peter, by then leader of the FPÖ (a potential coalition partner), when he came under attack from ‘Nazi hunter’ Simon Wiesenthal who had revealed that Peter had served in the Einsatzgruppen (which killed hundreds of thousands of Jews in Eastern Europe in 1941, although Peter denied taking part in mass killings). Kreisky even directly attacked Wiesenthal, going as far as calling him a Gestapo agent.
The FPÖ was founded in 1955/1956, and its first leader was Anton Reinthaller, a pre-war Austrian Nazi leader (although fairly ‘moderate’, non-violent) who served in Nazi public administration and the SS after 1938. He was replaced by Friedrich Peter in 1958, who held the party’s leadership until 1978. Peter, despite his Nazi past, gradually moved the party towards the centre, presenting the FPÖ as a modern liberal party. His successor as party leader, Norbert Steger, maintained a similar direction. Steger envisioned to transform the FPÖ into a liberal party similar to the German FDP, emphasizing free-market economics and anti-statist policies.
However, Steger was unable to transform the FPÖ into such a party. Firstly, the FPÖ was an ideologically heterogeneous party which included a mix of moderate free-market liberals, ex-Nazis, German nationalists and other more right-wing types. Under the SPÖ-FPÖ coalition government (1983-1986), for example, FPÖ defense minister Friedhelm Frischenschlager attracted much controversy when he shook hands with Nazi war criminal Walter Reder, responsible for the Marzabotto massacre in Italy, upon his return to Austria. Secondly, under Peter and Steger’s leaderships, FPÖ support had declined from the post-war high of 10-11% to only 5-6%. In the 1983 election, the FPÖ won an all-time low of 5%.
Steger was overthrown at a leadership conference in Innsbruck by Jörg Haider, the leader of the Carinthian FPÖ, who was backed by the German nationals in the FPÖ. Under his leadership, the FPÖ started clawing its way to the top – winning 9.7% in 1988, 16.6% in 1990, 22.5% in 1994, 22% in 1995 and the historic high of 26.9% in 1999. In 1989, Haider’s Carinthian FPÖ saw its vote share in the state elections surge by 13 points, placing second with 29%. In coalition with the ÖVP, Haider became Governor of Carinthia in 1989, a position he lost in 1989 after he commented positively on the Third Reich’s ‘employment policies’. On a similar register, Haider, in his career, also praised Waffen SS men and described the Austrian nation as an ‘ideological miscarriage’. Haider would regain his gubernatorial office in 1999, when the FPÖ claimed 42.1% of the vote in the state election, placing first.
Although Haider gained publicity for his comments about anything and everything Nazi, pan-Germanism and Nazi nostalgia played little to no role in the FPÖ’s campaigns. Instead, Haider’s leadership was marked by opposition to immigration, the European Union and populist attacks on the political leadership and Austria’s cozy political system.
Within the FPÖ, Haider’s right-wing populist leadership alienated the liberal minority, led by Heide Schmidt, which split off from the party in 1993 and founded the Liberal Forum (LIF). The liberals disagreed with Haider’s leadership style and his right-populist direction on issues such as immigration or the EU. The LIF achieved initial electoral success in the 1994 election, but it soon saw its support decline and effectively died out by 1999.
The FPÖ’s historic result in 1999 and the formation of a coalition government with ÖVP in which the FPÖ held key portfolios including finance, defense and justice, created an uproar in the EU. The EU considered that the FPÖ’s cabinet participated legitimized the European far-right and they saw it as a breach of the traditional cordon sanitaire around the far-right in other European countries - although it should be pointed out that EU outrage was far tamer after the post-fascist AN/MSI entered the Italian government in 1994.
At any rate, the EU boycott of Austria was counterproductive and the FPÖ soon found itself steamrolled by its far more experienced coalition partner. Besides, the FPÖ struggled to adapt to its cabinet participation after having gotten there on an anti-establishment drive. Blue-collar supporters disliked the ÖVP’s neoliberal economic reforms and the government lost support when a tax reform, a major demand of the FPÖ, was postponed. The FPÖ lost support in state elections as early as 2000.
Jörg Haider did not enter the government, preferring to stay on as governor of his home state and influencing the party and coalition from the outside. In 2000, Haider officially stepped down from the party’s leadership and was replaced by Susanne Riess-Passer, the Vice-Chancellor. At least twice, Haider announced his definite retirement from politics, before changing his mind within days. Despite being formally removed from the FPÖ leadership, Haider remained the ‘true’ leader of the party. He created uncomfortable controversies for the government in 2002 when he caused a crisis with the Czech Republic by demanding the closure of a Czech nuclear facility and later by his controversial visit to Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein (Haider was well known for his close ties to Saddam Hussein and Muammar Gaddafi).
Haider’s involvement in government business came to irk the FPÖ’s cabinet ministers, who adopted a more pragmatic and moderate attitude while in government. In August 2002, he criticized the government for delaying tax reforms due to major floods, while Riess-Passer backed the government’s policy on tax reform. The FPÖ’s right-wing, backed by Haider, organized a leadership conference at Knittelfeld (Styria) in September 2002, at which the party’s anti-government right-wing disavowed its cabinet members. The next day, Riess-Passer, the FPÖ finance minister Karl-Heinz Grasser (who later defected to the ÖVP) and parliamentary club leader Peter Westenthaler, resigned from their positions. This crisis led to snap elections in November 2002 in which the FPÖ’s support plummeted to 10.1% of the vote and lost 33 seats. A much weakened FPÖ remained in government.
The FPÖ’s internal crises and electoral annihilation did not end there. The party suffered even more severe loses in state elections after 2002, and it collapsed to only 6% in the 2004 EU elections. Once again, the FPÖ’s cabinet participation and electoral failures led to an internal crisis in the party, except that Haider was now the one being opposed by the party’s right. In 2005, FPÖ chairwoman and Haider’s sister Ursula Haubner saw her position threatened by the party’s right, led by Vienna FPÖ leader Heinz-Christian Strache. In April 2005, Haider, Haubner and Vice-Chancellor Hubert Gorbach (among others, including most of the FPÖ caucus) quit the FPÖ and founded the Alliance for the Future of Austria (BZÖ), which was almost immediately marginalized in comparison to the FPÖ in two state elections in 2005. The black-blue coalition became a black-orange (BZÖ) and completed its term in 2006.
The regrouped FPÖ was led by Heinz-Christian Strache, who reoriented the party on a more radical, far-right orientation focusing on immigration, integration, Islam and the EU. In the 2006 elections, Strache’s FPÖ won 11% of the vote, a low result but nevertheless a small improvement on the united FPÖ’s result in 2002 – despite the loss of its Carinthian stronghold to Haider’s BZÖ. In 2008, the FPÖ won 17% of the vote, a significant improvement.
Haider’s untimely death shortly after the 2008 elections, in which the BZÖ had won 11% of the vote, did not reunite the divided Austrian far-right, as the federal BZÖ took a right-liberal turn. However, the Carinthian branch of the BZÖ, dominated by ‘Haiderites’ closer to the far-right, broke away from the BZÖ and founded the Freedom Party in Carinthia (FPK), which became the FPÖ’s state branch in a CSU/CSU-type of relationship.
The past five years have been a mixed bag for the FPÖ, which polled up to 27% (its 1999 record) but saw its support drop to the high teens-low twenties more recently. In 2010, Heinz-Christian Strache won 25.8% of the vote in the Vienna state elections, more than predicted by polls and close to its 1996 Viennese record. In January 2012, the FPÖ’s support temporarily declined after Strache’s controversial “new Jews” comment – saying that his supporters were the “new Jews”, likening the troubles they faced because of protesters outside a controversial far-right ball in Vienna to the persecution of the Jews under Nazi rule. The FPÖ’s support declined considerably, below 20%, starting in the summer of 2012 – a mix of Frank Stronach’s new party joining the scene and corruption scandals badly hurting the Carinthian FPK but also senior FPÖ parliamentarian Martin Graf (accused of swindling a 90-year old woman). Following the spectacular loses suffered by the FPK in the March 2013 Carinthian state elections, there were divisions between the FPK and the FPÖ which led to the FPK merging into the FPÖ in June 2013.
The FPÖ, like other successful European far-right parties, strongly polarize public opinion. Strache and the FPÖ are disliked by a large majority of voters, and the party’s strongest critics brand it an extremist, xenophobic and racist party. On the other hand, the FPÖ has a fluctuating but relatively robust core of voters, who see in it a party either close to their ideology or, more often, a protest option against the corrupt and stale major parties.
FPO campaign poster: ‘Love thy neighbor: For me, that’s our Austrians’ / ‘High time for charity’
The FPÖ’s campaign have traditionally focused on immigration, asylum and integration issues, although less so in this election. Social and economic issues, which the FPÖ often ties to its criticism of immigration, have always been central to the FPÖ’s ideology as well. The party’s tagline is die soziale heimatpartei, or ‘the social homeland party’. In this election, the FPÖ’s slogan was liebe die nächsten (love thy neighbor), although that was followed by für mich sind das unsere österreicher (for me, that’s our Austrians). One of their posters even featured a sweet grandmother embracing Strache.
The party has tough stances against immigration, asylum seekers and Islam. The ÖVP-FPÖ government introduced stricter laws on asylum, immigration and integration while they were in government; a 1999 law forced non-EU foreigners residing in Austria to take German classes (half of which they would pay for from their own pockets) and threatened with losing social benefits and their right of residency if they refused.
The FPÖ wishes to limit asylum, which it feels should only be temporary, and wants to crack down on asylum abuse, by immediately deporting those who abuse the system. Furthermore, the party wants to deny asylum to all those who come from a safe third country or those whose asylum requests have previously been rejected by a safe third country.
The FPÖ’s platform accused the SPÖ and ÖVP of bringing more and more immigrants into Austria on the pretext of jobs, something which the FPÖ said endangers Austrian jobs, fuels social dumping and is destroying the educational system. It wants to close the labour market to workers from the east.
Closely related to these issues, the party has often campaigned hard on issues of national identity and against ‘Islamization’, denouncing Islam as contrary to Europe/Austria’s ‘Judeo-Christian values’. The FPÖ platform called on limiting/stopping immigration from outside the EU, opposed Turkish membership in the EU, denounced Islamization and promoted the German language. The FPÖ has often rhetorically associated immigration with criminality. They want to automatically deport foreign criminals, and to fight all crime, they want more means for the police and stiffer sentencing.
In the past, the FPÖ ran into some controversy with its very blunt language on those issues. In the 2010 Viennese elections, Strache’s campaign posters included slogans such as Mehr Mut für unser Wiener Blut (more strength for our Viennese blood), Zu viel Fremdes tut niemandem gut (too much foreign[ers] does no one good) or Wir bewahren unsere Heimatstadt. Die SPÖ macht sie uns fremd (we maintain our hometown. The SPÖ makes it foreign). In the 2006 Viennese elections, the FPÖ posters stated that “Vienna must not become Istanbul” (previously, under Haider, “Vienna must not become Chicago”).
Some of the party’s immigration/asylum proposals also significantly isolate them from the other parties: they are the only party favouring the detention of asylum seekers’ children pending deportation or creating a separate healthcare system for non-EU foreigners.
In this campaign, however, the FPÖ ran a comparatively tame campaign with feel-good slogans like “love thy neighbor” (though foreigners apparently don’t count as neighbors) or “high time for charity” – the party branded its policy as one ‘Nächstenliebe‘ (charity). Socioeconomic issues were high on the FPÖ’s agenda, which has often been described as a contradictory mix of economic liberalism and interventionism. However, in this campaign, Strache focused a lot on defending the welfare state (for ‘real’ Austrians), criticizing the SPÖVP government for its policies on matters such as pensions,
The FPÖ wants to reserve full benefits for Austrian citizens and stop the ‘export’ of family allowances abroad. It also conditions its ‘charity’ by saying that it only wants to help those who want to help themselves but cannot do so on their own.
The party’s platform called for increasing family allowances, tax relief for families with children, rent reduction, investments in social housing, increasing the monthly minimum wage to €1,600, solidarity tax for millionaires, an entitlement to a markdown-free pension after 45 years employment, fixing the legal retirement age for men at 65, keeping women’ retirement age at 60 and an increase in minimum pensions. On a more liberal line, the party’s platform emphasized lower taxes: lowering the tax rate for the lowest income bracket from 36.5% to 25% and tax breaks for small/medium businesses. It also accussed the two major parties of favouring big corporations and banks, and promised to relieve small/medium businesses by reducing bureaucracy, exempting them from compulsory contributions and promoting subsidized bank loans for domestic businesses.
The party takes conservative stances on moral/societal issues such as same-sex marriage, religious symbols in classrooms (the crucifix) and is critical of the use of gender quotas or penalties to promote gender equality in business (the left-wing parties favour gender quotas).
The FPÖ is Eurosceptic – Strache insists he’s pro-European, but also says that the EU has not created social peace. In this campaign, the FPÖ aimed its Eurosceptic fire at the so-called “liability madness” and advocated withdrawing from the European Stability Mechanism (ESM) and the European Financial Stability Facility (EFSF) and reducing Austria’s contributions to the EU. It is also opposed to Eurobonds, and wants to support the Eurozone into a ‘strong’ northern Euro and ‘weak’ southern Euro. Under Strache’s leadership, the FPÖ has become more pro-Israel; the party is also pro-Russian and pro-Serbian.
As an anti-establishment party, the FPÖ is also pretty big on issues like direct democracy: its wants to introduce binding popular initiative referendums (250,000 voter signatures), veto referendums and promoting direct democracy through the internet.
The Greens-The Green Alternative (Die Grünen – Die Grüne Alternative or Die Grünen) are Austria’s green party. In the past three elections, the Greens won between 9.5% and 11% of the vote, making them one of the consistently strongest green parties in Europe.
The opposition against the construction of the Zwentendorf nuclear power plant in 1978 (resulting in the defeat of nuclear energy in a 1979 referendum) and popular mobilization against plans to build a power plant on the Danube at Hainburg in 1984 are often cited as the events which led to the formation of the Austrian Greens. The modern-day Greens were founded in 1986, in an attempt to unite a leftist green movement and a right-wing green party, both of which had run separate lists in the 1983 elections (1.9% for the conservatives, 1.4% for the leftists). Proto-green politicians, however, had been winning some seats at the local level since 1977, beginning in Salzburg.
A Green list won 4.8% of the vote and 8 seats in the 1986 elections. Political inexperience, tensions between the parliamentarians and the base (a constant in the history of many early green parties), internal divisions and a knack for provocative statements/actions marked their first term in the Nationalrat. In the 1990 elections, the Greens kept their share of the vote and took 10 seats. In the 1994 elections, after presenting themselves as a “constructive opposition” (in contrast to the FPÖ’s intransigence) and as a bulwark against the FPÖ (the Greens had been active in fighting the FPÖ’s first anti-immigration actions), the Greens increased their support to 7.3% and 13 seats. In snap elections in 1995, the Greens proved unable to find their voice in a campaign which did not hit on their core themes, and their support fell to 4.8%. Reorganized under the leadership of Alexander van der Bellen, who remained Green leader until 2009, the Greens returned to the 1994 levels in 1999 (7.4%) and increased their vote to 9.5% in 2002.
The Greens won their best result in 2006, with 11.1% and 21 seats. Their support fell slightly in the 2008 election, winning 10.4% and 20 seats. Eva Glawischnig is the Green leader since 2009 and was the party’s top candidate in this election.
The Greens are often cited as a potential coalition partner for either the SPÖ or the ÖVP (or both) at the federal level, but the Greens have not yet participated in a federal governing coalition. At the state level, however, the Greens currently govern in coalition with the SPÖ in Vienna (since 2010), with the ÖVP in Upper Austria (since 2003), Salzburg and Tyrol (both since 2013) and with both parties in a coalition within Proporz in Carinthia (since 2013).
The Austrian Greens are often described as a centrist party, which attempts to appeal to dissatisfied voters from both the ÖVP and SPÖ. There are differences between the state parties in terms of ideology: the Viennese Greens are widely seen as the most left-wing branch of the Austrian Greens.
Traditional green themes such as environmental and economic sustainability, solidarity, human rights, feminism, grassroots democracy and non-violence are at the core of the party’s ideology.
The environment was, naturally, atop the Greens’ platform and remained the key preoccupation for most of their voters. In this elections, the Greens targeted 100% use of renewable energies by 2035. To reach this goal, the Greens proposed a ‘get out of oil’ plan, a €1 million solar rooftop panels program. Another key Green initiative, which is due to be implemented in three states starting next year, is the 365 Euro-Öffi-Ticket – a plan to reduce public transportation costs to a maximum of €1,095 per year (€1/day for transportation within one state, €2/day for transportation across one state border, €3/day across Austria). Other key parts of their environmental agenda included: increasing the truck toll to shift goods transport to rail, promoting public transit and non-polluting forms of transportation, entrenching animal welfare in the constitution, ending factory farming, promoting organic farming and shifting to 100% organic food in kindergartens, schools and hospitals.
The Greens’ socioeconomic policies in this election were rather left-leaning. The party wants upper rent limits, more social housing, opposition to the ‘two-class system in medicine’, creating a needs-based basic income to close gaps in the existing welfare system and ensure a ‘decent living for all’, no tuition fees for universities, a statutory universal minimum wage of €8.50/hour, full social insurance for all employees, increasing the cost of overtime hours, mandatory rest periods.
Naturally, the Greens take liberal positions on moral/societal issues: they favour same-sex marriage and adoption rights, legalizing soft drugs, creation 10,000 “women jobs” and linking government funding/contracts for business to the promotion of women. They also tend to have liberal attitudes on immigration: jus soli citizenship (if the parents are permanent residents) or granting work permits to asylum seekers as soon as they have applied for asylum (something which almost all parties, including the SPÖ oppose). Originally opposed to EU membership, the Greens are now s