Freedom Party of Austria
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The Austrian Freedom Party (Freiheitliche Partei Österreichs, abbreviated to FPÖ) is an Austrian political party usually associated with the name of Jörg Haider. The FPÖ is generally regarded as a populist party and often classed as a Euronationalist party. It promises stronger anti-immigration laws, stricter law enforcement and more funds for families.
Due to a secession of many prominent party members, the FPÖ is currently (April 2005) in turmoil, with an unclear future.
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Origins and history
The Freedom Party was founded in 1955 and had its roots in the Pan German movement, which included both elements of liberalism and nationalism. It absorbed the political currents of former parties such as the Landbund and the Greater German People's Party of the First Republic. Its immediate predecessor was the Federation of Independents (Verband der Unabhängigen – VdU), which had obtained 12% of the electorate in 1949 but later collapsed after internal strife.
Even though many of the FPÖ's leading proponents such as Anton Reinthaller and Friedrich Peter were former Nazis, as a third party it had a broad appeal among voters who felt uncomfortable both with the perceived deference to the Catholic Church of the People's Party and the fairly left wing socialism of the Social Democrats at that time. During the following decades, its adherents included anti-clerical liberals, business representatives striving for more economic liberalism and German nationalists, some of whom were sympathetic to some Nazi policies. Even today, the lower ranks of the party organisation are largely made up of members of German-nationalist Studentenverbindungen. However, this hardly ever stopped other parties from cooperating with it, e.g. Bruno Kreisky's minority government (1970–1971) could only survive because the FPÖ agreed to tolerate it.
In 1980, the FPÖ's liberal wing gained control under the leadership of Norbert Steger, who entered into a coalition government with the Social Democrats in 1983. Since results of local elections and polls showed that this threatened the party's existence, discontent with the party leadership grew, which enabled Jörg Haider to take over the party leadership at the Innsbruck convention of 1986 with the help of the party's German-nationalist wing. Social Democratic Chancellor Franz Vranitzky subsequently announced new elections and then entered into a coalition with the People's Party.
Jörg Haider
Jörg Haider was the leading figure of the FPÖ between 1986 and 2001 and soon became one of the most controversial European politicians - mostly because of his dubious dealing with Austria's National Socialist history.
In 1970 Haider became the leader of the FPÖ youth movement, where he was perceived to be a liberal. As a federal deputy in Carinthia he gained some notoriety, and popularity, in attacking linguistic privileges of the Slovenian minority. Haider rose rapidly through the party ranks, becoming party leader in 1986.
The Freedom Party attracted protest votes and those who desire no association with the other major parties. The party's mixture of populism and anti-establishment themes propagated by its aggressive leader steadily gained support over the years. It attracted about 27% of the vote in the 1999 elections.
Jörg Haider became governor of Carinthia in 1989 for the first time, but had to resign in 1991 following a remark that the Nazis had pursued better employment policies than the current coalition government in Vienna. He regained the post in 1999 and has held it since then.
In 1993, the remaining liberals within the FPÖ, including four members of the National Council (lower house of the parliament), seceded from the party to found the Liberal Forum. This party managed to remain in parliament until 1999.
As a matter of fact, most Austrian observers do not consider Jörg Haider as the die-hard nationalist as which he is sometimes presented outside the country, but rather as a populist who sometimes plays with chauvinist and anti-immigrant sentiments in order to attract votes. However, beside the populist group around Haider, the party still has a large nationalist wing with a problematic relationship to Austria's Nazi past.
The coalition government
In the 1999 parliamentary election, the FPÖ received 27% of the votes, more than in any election before; by a small margin (about 400 votes, with 4.6 million Austrians voting) they even beat the ÖVP (the conservative "People's Party"), which had until then always taken first or second place in national elections.
In early 2000, the FPÖ joined a coalition government with Wolfgang Schüssel's ÖVP. The Freedom Party had to take a junior part in the coalition, as otherwise the ÖVP would have continued their coalition with the SPÖ. There was a great degree of outrage both within the country and internationally. The heads of government of the other 14 EU members decided to cease cooperation with the Austrian government, as it was felt in many countries that the cordon sanitaire against coalitions with parties considered as right-wing extremists, which had mostly held in Western Europe since 1945, had been breached. For example, for several months, other national leaders refused to shake hands and socialize with members of the Schüssel government. This was described as "sanctions" by representatives of the ÖVP and FPÖ, and supporters of the government often blamed social democrats and President Thomas Klestil for them, and questioned their loyalty to the country. The EU leaders soon saw that their measures were counterproductive, and returned to normality during the summer of 2000, even though the coalition remained unchanged.
In February 2000, Haider stepped down from the leadership of the Freedom Party. This was widely seen as a cynical move to appease foreign criticism, as he was alleged to control the party from behind the scenes. He retained the governorship of Carinthia.
Even though the FPÖ members of the government and the party leadership at that time consisted largely of politicians such as Susanne Riess-Passer and Karl-Heinz Grasser, whose career had so far depended entirely on Haider's populism, Haider himself appeared to be increasingly discontent with the situation, as his party began to lose in regional and local elections, since it was no longer in the position to gain votes by criticizing the government. This caused a dispute within the party, which escalated at a special party convention at Knittelfeld that caused three leading members of the government to resign.
In the November 2002, general elections in Austria resulted in a landslide victory (42.27% of the vote) for the People's Party. The Freedom Party, which had been stronger than the People's Party in 1999 , was reduced to 10.16% of the vote, less than half its previous share. Nevertheless, the coalition government of the People's Party and Freedom Party (now with 79+18=97 seats in Austria's 183-seat parliament, down from 52+52=104 in 1999) was renewed in February 2003.
In September 2003, regional elections, notably in Upper Austria, also brought heavy losses, with the Austrian Green Party for the first time receiving more votes than the Freedom Party. The elections to the European Parliament in June 2004 reduced the Freedom Party's share of the vote to a mere 6%. Similar results were achieved at several state and local elections.
Thus, the FPÖ seems to have largely lost its appeal to voters, except in Carinthia, where it gained 42.5% in the state elections of March 7, 2004. However, that success seems to be resting entirely on Haider's personal charisma, which appears to be rapidly losing its effectiveness in the rest of the country.
Secession of Jörg Haider and the BZÖ
During the last couple of months, the FPÖs has been increasingly ridden by internal strife between populist and nationalist factions. Its bargaining position within the coalition government has already been considered to be low by many political observers for some time, which has allowed chancellor Wolfgang Schüssel to pursue largely policies favored by his own party.
On April 4, 2005, several prominent party members (among them former chairman Jörg Haider, his sister and current chairwoman Ursula Haubner, vice chancellor Hubert Gorbach, as well as most of the 18 representatives in parliament) left the party and founded a new party called "Alliance for the future of Austria" (Bündnis Zukunft Österreich" — BZÖ). Regional party organizations seem to be split between the two factions. The future of the party after the split, which may well result in new elections in Austria, seems very uncertain at present.
On April 23, 2005, Heinz-Christian Strache was elected as new chairman of the party, following Hilmar Kabas, who had taken this position temporarily after Ursula Haubner's resignation.
Timeline
The bar on the left shows the FPÖ's party chairman, while the bar on the right side shows the Chancellor of Austria at that time, with the color of his party affiliation.
<timeline> ImageSize = width:400 height:500 PlotArea = width:350 height:450 left:50 bottom:50 Legend = columns:3 left:50 top:25 columnwidth:50
DateFormat = yyyy Period = from:1958 till:2005 TimeAxis = orientation:vertical ScaleMajor = unit:year increment:4 start:1958
- there is no automatic collision detection,
- so shift texts up or down manually to avoid overlap
Colors=
id:FPÖ value:blue legend:FPÖ id:ÖVP value:gray(0.25) legend:ÖVP id:SPÖ value:red legend:SPÖ
Define $dx = 25 # shift text to right side of bar Define $dy = -4 # adjust height
PlotData=
bar:BPO color:red width:25 mark:(line,white) align:left fontsize:S
from:1958 till:1978 shift:($dx,$dy) color:FPÖ text:Friedrich Peter from:1978 till:1980 shift:($dx,$dy) color:FPÖ text:Alexander Götz from:1980 till:1986 shift:($dx,$dy) color:FPÖ text:Norbert Steger from:1986 till:2000 shift:($dx,$dy) color:FPÖ text:Jörg Haider from:2000 till:2002 shift:($dx,-18) color:FPÖ text:Susanne Riess-Passer from:2002 till:2002 shift:($dx,-17) color:FPÖ text:Mathias Reichold from:2002 till:2004 shift:($dx,-18) color:FPÖ text:Herbert Haupt from:2004 till:2005 shift:($dx,-23) color:FPÖ text:Ursula Haubner from:2005 till:2005 shift:($dx,-19) color:FPÖ text:Hilmar Kabas from:2005 till:end shift:($dx,-10) color:FPÖ text:Heinz-Christian Strache
bar:BReg color:red width:25 mark:(line,white) align:left fontsize:7
from:1958 till:1959 shift:($dx,-3) color:ÖVP text:Raab II from:1959 till:1960 shift:($dx,$dy) color:ÖVP text:Raab III from:1960 till:1961 shift:($dx,-2) color:ÖVP text:Raab IV from:1961 till:1963 shift:($dx,$dy) color:ÖVP text:Gorbach I from:1963 till:1964 shift:($dx,$dy) color:ÖVP text:Gorbach II from:1964 till:1966 shift:($dx,$dy) color:ÖVP text:Klaus I from:1966 till:1970 shift:($dx,$dy) color:ÖVP text:Klaus II from:1970 till:1971 shift:($dx,$dy) color:SPÖ text:Kreisky I from:1971 till:1975 shift:($dx,$dy) color:SPÖ text:Kreisky II from:1975 till:1979 shift:($dx,$dy) color:SPÖ text:Kreisky III from:1979 till:1983 shift:($dx,$dy) color:SPÖ text:Kreisky IV from:1983 till:1986 shift:($dx,$dy) color:SPÖ text:Sinowatz from:1986 till:1987 shift:($dx,$dy) color:SPÖ text:Vranitzky I from:1987 till:1990 shift:($dx,$dy) color:SPÖ text:Vranitzky II from:1990 till:1994 shift:($dx,$dy) color:SPÖ text:Vranitzky III from:1994 till:1996 shift:($dx,$dy) color:SPÖ text:Vranitzky IV from:1996 till:1997 shift:($dx,$dy) color:SPÖ text:Vranitzky V from:1997 till:2000 shift:($dx,$dy) color:SPÖ text:Klima from:2000 till:2003 shift:($dx,$dy) color:ÖVP text:Schüssel I from:2003 till:end shift:($dx,$dy) color:ÖVP text:Schüssel II
</timeline>
External links
- FPÖ Homepage (German) (http://www.fpoe.at/bundneu/index.html)
- Freedom Party of Austria (http://www.photoglobe.info/ebooks/austria/cstudies_austria_0139.html) Country Studies - Austriade:Freiheitliche Partei Österreichs
fr:Freiheitliche Partei Österreichs no:Freiheitliche Partei Österreichs sv:Freiheitliche Partei Österreichs