Sebastian Schäffer: Bridge-building Austria fights with the Fortress Austria [VIDEO]
Sebastian Schäffer, director of the Vienna-based Institute for the Danube Region and Central Europe, comments on the results of the 2024 Austrian parliamentary elections. He explains the context and roots of the victory of the far-right Freedom Party of Austria (FPÖ), pointing out that the election campaign revolved around the issues of migration and asylum seekers, Austrian neutrality and, to a lesser extent, rising prices and social issues. He comments on the likely composition of the future government, which could be a right-wing coalition, but also an alliance against the FPÖ. Schäffer also addresses the FPÖ’s anti-democratic ambitions and recalls the Ibiza affair, pointing out how easily it was forgotten, at least by the far-right voters (i.e. one third of the electorate). The second part of the interview discusses Austria’s future foreign policy. Historically, the Second Austrian Republic after the Second World War often proved to be a neutral ground for political negotiations and the search for agreements. Austria has served as a bridge between East and West, Western and South-Eastern Europe. But what the Freedom Party of Austria now promises is a Fortress Austria, closed to newcomers, suspicious of its neighbours, not interested in full Schengen enlargement to Romania and Bulgaria, and likely to join forces with Viktor Orban’s Hungary to dismantle the rule of law in Europe. Nevertheless, as the guest on Cross-Border Talks points out, it is still unclear who exactly will govern Austria after this election, and what kind of foreign policy that government would pursue.
The entire video transcription is available below.
Małgorzata Kulbaczewska-Figat: Good evening everyone and welcome to another edition of Cross-Border Talks. This time we meet just after the Austrian parliamentary elections, a very important event for anyone interested in Central Europe, Eastern Europe or European politics in general. And we are going to ask Sebastian Schäffer, director of the Vienna-based Institute for the Danube Region and Central Europe, to explain the outcome of these elections and help us understand it better.
Sebastian is the author of numerous articles on regional issues, Austria’s relations with its neighbours and more. And this time we are going to ask him questions about Austrian domestic politics, but also about what will change in Austria’s relations with its neighbours after the victory of the far right in the parliamentary elections. So Sebastian, thank you very much for accepting our invitation to be our guest on Cross-Border Talks.
Thank you, Malgorzata. It’s always a pleasure to talk to you and your colleagues.
And at this point, I’d like to remind everyone that Cross-Border Talks is available on all major social media platforms, including the YouTube channel, so that you don’t miss any of the talks we’ll be recording in the future. The best way to do this is to subscribe to the channel.
After this brief technical announcement, let’s get back to the Austrian elections. The victory of the Freedom Party of Austria did not come as a complete surprise to anyone. In fact, it is not the sudden rise of a new political force, as in the case of some of the far-right forces in various European countries, but it is a step forward for a party with a solid electoral base that has already been in government and not so long ago. But what are the reasons for this first victory? Not a high position, not a good result, but a real victory. What were the main themes of the campaign? How did Herbert Kickl win the hearts of the Austrians?
Well, yes, that’s true. It’s not a total surprise, because I think they’ve been leading in the polls for the last couple of years. And as a famous Austrian pollster says, the election is not decided on the eve of the election day, but rather in the four or five years, in this case the parliament has five years of a term before it.
It’s a very strange and interesting result in a way, I would say, because it’s much clearer than I expected. I would have thought that the difference between the Austrian People’s Party and the extreme right-wing party would be much smaller. I’m a German citizen, so I can’t vote in Austria, but I’m also a bit astonished by the Austrian voters, that only five years after the Ibiza scandal they vote for this party in first place, which has never happened before in the history of the Second Republic.
And what was his success? What did Kickl do right? No pun intended. He focused on issues that are probably the only thing that the far right in Europe can agree on, and that is migration, integration and asylum. And we also saw a very personalised campaign around Herbert Kickl, who used the rhetoric of I’m your tool to make Austria… he didn’t say great again, but better, safer, close to the borders. He fantasised about a fortress Austria, and this apparently appealed to a third of the voters and made him the most successful candidate in this election campaign.
Perhaps one more sentence about the election campaign. It was, unlike the last two elections, very, I would say, collegial, not attacking the candidates personally, trying to find faults in the others, but at the same time there was a clear lack of international politics. The European Union was not mentioned at all, and the dominant issues, apart from the one that put Kickl in first place – migration, integration, asylum – were above all security and terrorism, Austria’s neutrality, and then, to a lesser extent, the situation of social security, inflation, high prices, and so on and so forth.
Should we expect a united right-wing government? It is up to President Alexander Van der Bellen to decide who gets the mandate to form a government, and the first signals from the People’s Party suggest that they will not join such a government if Herbert Kickl is to be the new chancellor. But what if he really does give up the leadership?
Is it possible that Austria will be governed by a coalition between the FPÖ and the ÖVP?
If the situation had been reversed, with the People’s Party in first place and the FPÖ in second, I think we would see such a coalition as the most likely outcome. But Chancellor Nehammer made it clear during the election campaign and also yesterday, immediately after the results were announced, that he would stick to his promise not to form a coalition with Herbert Kickl. And now that the FPÖ is in first place, I think it will be very difficult for Kickl not to demand to become chancellor.
I think he actually has much more to gain from the spin that all the other parties do not want to work with him. He would keep claiming that these are the parties of the old system – which he also mentioned during the election campaign, although he is probably the most systemic politician of all the leading candidates, having been a professional politician for decades and having been in government as interior minister in the last ÖVP-FPÖ coalition.
So I believe that Nehammer will keep his promise. The question is, will Nehammer remain the leader of the ÖVP? And if that changes, or if the FPÖ would really say, no, we will not insist on Kickl becoming chancellor and/or minister, then there is a possibility that we will see that. But it is much more likely that we will have a coalition of the ÖVP with the Social Democrats and then maybe with the Neos. I don’t see the Greens at the moment, but the election results now, again surprisingly to me, also see the possibility of a coalition between the ÖVP and the FPÖ, because they would have enough mandates. A small majority, but they would have enough mandates.
So we could see an Austrian version of the grand coalition, the coalition between the Social Democrats and the Conservatives. But I would like to go back for a moment to the Ibiza affair that you mentioned and the fact that Austrian neutrality was one of the most hotly debated issues during this election campaign. If the voters were so quick to forget Ibiza and the promises made to a representative of the Russian oligarchy in that affair, if neutrality came to the fore in the debates, does that mean that the Austrian voters expect some kind of splendid isolation of their country on the international scene?
Do they want Austria, for instance, to withdraw from supporting Ukraine or something like this?
What the election has shown is that there is no single ‘Austrian voter’, but of course there is a party that stands for all these things that you have just mentioned. That is the Freedom Party. I would say that if we look at the reasons why this party was elected by the voters, it was to a large extent because they campaigned on these issues. Including the issue of withdrawing support from Ukraine or rather making peace with Russia – because then we can go back to the way things were and then everything will be cheaper and easier. Which, of course, will not be the case.
Austria certainly needs skilled migration. And of course it’s a tourist country. One of the big advantages is that they are in the heart of Europe, they are in the European Union, they have the euro, they have open borders. The puzzling thing for me is, have we not learnt not only from Ibiza, but have we not learnt from Brexit and the challenges that they are facing?
Do we really think that if a former economic power, which is not directly linked to the continent, is struggling to cut ties with the European Union, that a country that is barely a fifth of the size can act in the same way, as if it wasn’t something that would be drastically self-defeating?
That’s why I’m very sceptical when I read in the Polish media about an Austrian exit from the European Union. I believe that the Austrian political class is well aware of the factors you have just mentioned. Austria benefits a lot from being in the centre of the United Europe, with open borders and everything else.
But are we going to see a right-wing coalition and a larger right-wing coalition governing Austria, if there is a right-wing coalition, of course, entering into an even closer alliance with Viktor Orban’s Hungary and trying to influence the European Union from the inside rather than from the outside? And perhaps not only with Viktor Orbán, but also with other partners who are already in the Patriots for Europe group, the group in the European Parliament to which the FPÖ belongs.
Yes, definitely. On what you mentioned about the pro-Europeanness of the political elite within Austria, I was very relieved yesterday when I saw that not only the Federal President mentioned that the next government has to respect all the values that Austria wants to stand for, but also has to be pro-European. If you look at four of the five parties that are going into parliament, they have clearly said that they want to have a pro-European government without someone like Herbert Kickl, who believes in conspiracy theories, who undermines the European Charter of Human Rights, who has advocated the use of alternative medicine instead of the COVID-19 vaccination.
That is something that gives me some comfort. But it depends a lot on people at the moment. And so if Chancellor Nehammer is no longer there, and or if Kickl would really step into the second row for whatever reason, then I could see that we could end up in a situation where there is an arrangement of a far right government.
And we saw in the last coalition between the European FPÖ that there were certain tendencies to transform aspects of the Austrian state more into what Viktor Orbán has done in Hungary. One thing we should really keep in mind is that Herbert Kicker was not a chancellor before, he was a minister of the interior. He has done a lot of damage to the reputation of the Austrian intelligence and counter-intelligence services. Not everything is fully shared among partners in Europe. We have seen a pattern with Viktor Orbán, with Robert Fico, and I am afraid we may see this pattern again with Andrei Babiš possibly coming back next year in the Czech Republic, that if they come back a second time they will do everything they can to make sure they do not lose office again. And I could definitely see that with Herbert Kickl.
I could definitely see that when he comes to power he will try to make sure that he does not have to go again. And that is the danger. And that is the change that we are seeing. It is no secret that the Patriots for Europe in Vienna were initially financed by Kickl, Babiš and Orban. We see these tendencies. We see this development. I think it is no secret that the FPÖ is not a big fan of the rule of law and the democratic system that Austria has had in the past decades. Otherwise they wouldn’t be in this wonderful friendship contract with Edinaya Rossiya (the ruling party in the Russian Federation – note of the editor), even if it’s not extended.
We see where the overall ideas come from. We see where the overall goal is. And at the end of the day, we have had so many instances that they try to portray as single instances. There have been several instances of anti-Semitic, far-right statements by people within the party that we also have to see and talk openly about the fascist tendencies that are in that party.
So do you think that if a right-wing government is formed in Austria with the participation of the FPÖ, do you think that this cooperation between them and Orban, possibly Babiš from next year, will also have an influence on the overall European course? Would they try to transform Europe from the inside into a more anti-immigration Europe or something else? I don’t know, I don’t dare say more fascist. But you said yourself that there is such a current in the party.
Absolutely. I mean, we see it already. We see these tendencies in the Patriots for Europe. We see that that is there, that they are trying to do that. It’s been almost a decade now that we’ve had this challenge with migration and integration. I would decouple it a little bit from asylum seekers because it’s related, but it’s a complex issue.
Nevertheless, these things have been going on for a decade. And it dominates the discourse, even though we have much bigger challenges at the European level, which we also saw recently with this catastrophic flooding that happened not only in Austria, but along the Danube region all the way to Poland.
There are so many other challenges that we should talk about and that we have to deal with. First of all, of course, the destruction of the security architecture with the unjustified and totally disproportionate invasion of Ukraine by the Russian Federation. And what are we talking about? We are talking about migration, migration, migration, foreigners, foreigners, foreigners. And it’s absurd in itself that countries that have migration with each other within the European Union, because they’re part of the single market, but they’re running election campaigns on the backs of each other’s citizens. There is no solution coming from these parties to offer anything substantial that would make life better for any person in any of these countries. And yet they win elections and they influence the discourse on the European Union, because they have no interest in actually solving this issue, because it gives them votes.
And this is something that Viktor Orbán has shown, especially with the Migration and Asylum Pact on the European Union, but also before the situation that you could have done a burden sharing already in 2015, that we need a reform of the Dublin three system has been obvious for decades and we are not tackling it. Other parties also have to accept that they do not have a good offer, that they do not have the right ideas and solutions on these issues, although they are out there. But nobody is putting them in their manifestos.
And then the far right exploits these issues and wins elections and not only undermines our values that we took for granted after 1945, but also, as you said, actively undermines the European Union from within.
The issue of migration has also been raised in Austria’s relations with Romania and Bulgaria, as Austria has vetoed their accession to full Schengen because of concerns about migration. Do you expect that to change or will it only get worse?
We really have to wait and see who will be in the government. And if Herbert Kickl is going to be in the government and if the FPÖ is going to be in the government, I don’t expect anything to improve. Things will get worse. That’s clear.
If we have a pro-European government, which would be any coalition without the FPÖ, then I believe that there is a possibility for development, because I believe that. All four other parties, the People’s Party, the Social Democrats, the Neos and the Greens, will understand that if they form a coalition in any form against the FPÖ, they will have to listen to complains for five years that the FPÖ is not part of the government and that this is undemocratic, which is of course another populist phrase, another blatant lie, because in a parliamentary representative democratic system you have to find the majority. And if you do not have a majority, you are not in government. And if the majority is against you, even if you have 49.9 percent, then you have to accept that. But of course Kickl will take advantage of that, the FPÖ will take advantage of that. And there is a danger that if they are not successful, the next government, that the FPÖ will only get stronger in the next election. I still don’t see them getting an absolute majority, but you never know.
There are things that can drastically influence this kind of development. And if they are not successful, the next government will certainly help the FPÖ. I have the feeling that all the other four parties have understood this. And that’s why I’m a little bit optimistic that we will hopefully get a pro-European government, which will use the opportunity much better than in Germany, by the way, for a reform coalition that would actually tackle not only domestic challenges but also European ones.
And the integration of Romania and Bulgaria into the full Schengen area is definitely one of the challenges of European enlargement or the future development of the European Union. So let us look at other international challenges. Is there a role that Austria could play in the conflict in the Middle East, in the crisis that is going on after 7 October with the bombing of Gaza and now with the ongoing crisis in Lebanon, with the Israeli bombing of Lebanon?
Do you see a role for Austria in shaping the new security architecture? Because the new security architecture of the world is not only crumbling with Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, it’s also crumbling in the Middle East.
Well, what is happening in the Middle East is absolutely outside my area of expertise. What I would see, of course, is what Austria has done very well in the history of the Second Republic, which is to act as a bridge-builder, as a neutral country that could serve as a venue for negotiations to find solutions.
But again, I think the big question will be what kind of government we will see. Because, as I said, the FPÖ is, at its core, blatantly anti-Semitic. And therefore there is a challenge where I would see that an Israeli delegation could see a Chancellor Kickl as an honest broker. All the other parties, again, I would see more possibilities.
But as long as we don’t know what the next government is going to look like, I think we’re going to see quite a bit of development here. I expect a couple of months before that happens. And I don’t know if that’s enough time to solve the pressing problems in the Middle East at the moment.
Well, Austria the bridge-builder, is a country that could play a positive role in Europe and on a global scale. But Fortress Austria, which the far-right party is trying to promise its voters, would be a nightmare. Not only for Austria’s neighbours, but ultimately also for the Austrians themselves, for the reasons I have mentioned in this interview.
Thank you very much for this conversation. Our guest is Sebastian Schäfer, director of the Institute for the Danube Region and Central Europe, a Vienna-based think tank. I hope that we managed to answer some of your doubts, questions and explain more facts, the background of the recent Austrian elections.
Thank you very much, Sebastian, for accepting our invitation and for being with us today.
Thank you, Malgorzata. Always a pleasure. And I’ll be happy to come back when the dust has settled and we have a new Austrian government in a couple of months.
Thank you very much.
Thank you very much. At the last moment, I would just like to remind everyone listening to us to subscribe to Cross-Border Talks and to follow us on Facebook, X or other social platforms so as not to miss any episodes or articles we publish. Thank you very much for joining us today.
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