Aventina Holzer
On 29 September Austria held elections to its federal legislature, the National Council. The right-wing populist Freedom Party FPÖ emerged with the largest number of seats; 57 out of a total of 183, and with 28.8 percent of the total vote . After prolonged back and forth negotiations between the other parties, including between the right-wing-conservative ÖVP and the FPÖ, a coalition government excluding the FPÖ was created The economic liberal NEOS, the social democratic SPÖ and the ÖVP now form a government under the an ÖVP Chancellor, Christian Stocker. and with Andreas Babler of the SPÖ as Vice Chancellor.
The government‘s programme’s focusses on Austria’s 4.7 per cent of GDP budget deficit well above the European Union’s target of 3 per cent; plus, as elsewhere the issues of asylum and migration, a major issue of election demagogy. The government is already planning to suspend family reunification for asylum seekers. Anyone who let out a sigh of relief because worse – Herbert Kickel of the FPÖ as Chancellor – was averted, can hardly sit back and relax for the next five years. This government is basically a rotten compromise between conservatives, neoliberals and social democrats solely to keep out the far right wing and will probably not complete a full term.
Here we will look at its programme and at the role social democracy will play in it, under supposed ‚left winger‘ Andreas Babler, and whether the FPÖ will only grow stronger as a result of the austerity policy of the SPÖ, Neos, ÖVP coalition. Many aspects of the program are still unclear or only talk of an “examination” of, or a “commitment” to, abstract models.
Inflation and budget
The most important issue in the elections was the cost of living crisis. However, the government program barely addresses this issue which hits the majority of people in Austria. The biggest promise is the decoupling of rents from the consumer price index by 2028 and the development of a new rent index. In addition, the minimum term of rental contracts is to be extended to five years, which may reduce major rent increases in individual cases. But there is hardly any talk of rent caps or reductions. Rising costs in other areas will be shifted to commissions or reviewed to see price increases are not passed on directly to consumers (as in the area of energy and food, where the focus is on energy communities and more transparency in pricing).
However older people will face severe cuts. The pension contribution period will be increased to 42 years and contributions to health insurance for pensioners will also rise. The so-called “cold progression” (i.e. slipping into a higher tax bracket due to inflation) will also return, in part, after it has been compensated for by the government in recent years, with great self-praise.
Measures to provide relief, on the other hand, take up little space. Finally, the plans for budget reorganization, which had been negotiated by the FPÖ and ÖVP and submitted to the EU Commission, were adopted. For the vast majority of chapters of the government program that pledge spending money, it is still unclear when they can be implemented. They depend on the budgetary situation and are mentioned only with reservations. The reduction of non-wage labour costs, which are well above the EU average in Austria, is a long-standing demand of the Chamber of Commerce and de facto a redistribution from bottom to top.
Instead of relief, savings are to be made primarily on ecological measures (e.g. climate bonus) and in the ministries. In the latter, 1.1 billion euros in administrative expenses are to be ‘saved’. Exactly how this is done is left to the individual heads of department. There will be higher levies for banks and tax increases for foundations, which is a small ray of hope. However, these only account for a small portion of the revenue and are also to be significantly reduced again in 2027.
Is that enough to save 6.4 billion euros? Probably not. Most of the costs in the budget reorganization are borne by workers as private households, while the state and companies each contribute only slightly more than 20%. This can also be seen from which taxes are increased and which are decreased. Corporate tax for companies remains low, but tobacco and any costs that have to be paid to government agencies are becoming more expensive.
Racism and state control
The most reactionary proposals can be found in the section on “security”. In imitation of the classic FPÖ approach, the issue of security in the government program is directly linked to the issue of asylum and migration. Do asylum seekers and migration pose a security problem for Austria? The programme makes it sound that way. It speaks of stopping “irregular migration” and of abuse of the asylum system. Asylum applications are to be reduced to zero in the countrym. The ending (suposedy temporarily) of family reunification is justified by alleged abuse of the social system. The governing parties refer to emergency clauses because the systems are overburdened, and public order and security are disrupted. It remains very unlikely that this will be legally tenable in Austria, and it certainly contradicts EU law.
These severe encroachments on human rights would have been difficult even a few years ago with the SPÖ in government. Today they even work with the “leftist” Andreas Babler in office. There is further fantasizing about locking up people who are facing deportation for longer and under worse conditions than in the current, already reprehensible detention pending deportation. However, it is not possible to tell from the government program exactly what this will look like. There is to be a separate Austrian fund for “border protection”, or the removal of “sellable non-personal items” from asylum seekers to cover the costs of their accommodation. The already inadequate minimum security are also to be drastically reduced (by how much is not clear because there are differences between the federal states in this regard).
Asylum seekers, who otherwise have little access to any services and are not allowed to work, will thus have fewer and fewer opportunities to keep their heads above water. Full social benefits will only be available after an integration phase of up to 3 years. A headscarf ban for under 14-year-olds is to be introduced, which has the potential to push young people out of the public sphere. The ban is supposed to be aligned with the constitution, so it remains to be seen which spaces it includes. It is also supposed to become necessary for refugees to sign a declaration against antisemitism, which implicitly suggests that antisemitism is an imported problem and found primarily among pro-Palestinian Muslims. There is also a overt commitment to Israel in the program (bilateral commitment to security and cooperation). No mention is made of Austria’s own problem with anti-Semitism, which has been long forgotten because of an excellent relationship with Israel.
Great emphasis is also placed on better working conditions for the police and internal security. In the fight against terrorism, the government relies on the Documentation Centre for Political Islam, which exposes Muslim people to general suspicion and facilitates surveillance. The government has also announced tighter regulations for the law on associations and more information that will be required for registering rallies. This will affect all forms of political organization – right-wing and left-wing.
In terms of foreign policy and defence , i.e. war preparations , the government program is also clearly reactionary. There is a clear commitment to rearmament and to participating in the rearmament of Europe in the form of Skyshield. This brings Austria closer to the European great powers in their confrontation with Russian imperialism, in the midst of the international crisis between the great powers.
What does the new government look like?
But not only the government program shows the problems we are facing. The distribution of ministry posts also sends a clear signal. The SPÖ is willing to be number one in crisis management with the Ministry of Finance, which will mean cuts and betrayals of the working class, and the Neos get the Ministry of Education, where we have already seen their neoliberal influence in Vienna. The Ministry of Economy will, of course, remain in the hands of the ÖVP, who believe that the problems of the free market can be solved through competition. With such a cabinet, it is no wonder that the coalition agreement does not include any meaningful measures to combat inflation.
We see that this government is hardly any better than one outlined in the FPÖ/ÖVP coalition negotiations when it comes to asylum and “integration”. The upcoming cuts also do not bode well. An important factor is that with social democracy, the organizations of the workers‘ movement led by the SPÖ – in particular the ÖGB and the Chamber of Labor – are once again entering into a policy of class truce. This means that without huge pressure from below, there will be little resistance from the trade union leadership to the attacks on our rights. We must build up opposition within the workers‘ movement to the participation of social-democrat-led organizations in crisis management and make it clear to the social-democratic base that the SPÖ has long since ceased to work in their interest – even under the “left” Andi Babler.
We still need to resist the international shift to the right that we are experiencing, which now obviously also makes a SPÖ/ÖVP/Neos government a clearly right-wing government. To do this, we need to organize industrial action and resistance, especially with regard to attacks on human rights. A united front between all organizations of the working class and left is needed to avert these attacks.
In the upcoming Vienna elections, the Communist Party (KPÖ) -LINKS ticket on the ballot paper at least offers an option for expressing one’s rejection of the government’s program and voting for a dedicated opposition to the social-democratic sell-out to the conservatives and neoliberals. But voting alone will change hardly anything. That is why it is also necessary to organize clearly against the impending attacks. We therefore also call on people to join us in building a powerful left, be it in LINKS or in the trade union base, in order to organize direct pressure on the bureaucrats there.