Freedom Party Of Austria

The Freedom Party of Austria (german: Freiheitliche Partei Österreichs, FPÖ) is a national-conservative and right-wing populist political party in Austria. It has been led by Herbert Kickl since 2021. It is the third largest of five parties in the National Council, with 30 of the 183 seats, and won 16.2% of votes cast in the 2019 legislative election and it is represented in all nine state legislatures. On a European level, the FPÖ is a founding member of the Identity and Democracy Party and its three MEPs sit with the Identity and Democracy (ID) group.

The FPÖ was founded in 1956 as the successor to the short-lived Federation of Independents (VdU), representing pan-Germanists and national liberals opposed to socialism and Catholic clericalism, represented by the Social Democratic Party of Austria (SPÖ) and the Austrian People's Party (ÖVP), respectively. Its first leader, Anton Reinthaller, was a former Nazi functionary and SS officer, but the FPÖ did not advocate far-right policies and presented itself as a centrist party. The FPÖ was long the third largest in Austria and had modest support. Under the leadership of Norbert Steger in the early 1980s, it sought to style itself on Germany's Free Democratic Party. The FPÖ gave external support to SPÖ chancellor Bruno Kreisky (SPÖ) after the 1970 election and joined Fred Sinowatz's government, as SPÖ's junior partner, after the 1983 election.

Jörg Haider became leader of the party in 1986, after which it began an ideological turn towards right-wing populism. This resulted in a strong surge in electoral support, but also led the SPÖ to break ties, and a splinter in the form of the Liberal Forum in 1993. In the 1999 election, the FPÖ won 26.9% of the vote, becoming the second most popular party, ahead of the ÖVP by around 500 votes. The two parties eventually reached a coalition agreement in which ÖVP retained the office of chancellor. The FPÖ soon lost most of its popularity, falling to 10% in the 2002 election, but remained in government as junior partner. Internal tensions led Haider and much of the party leadership to leave in 2005, forming the Alliance for the Future of Austria (BZÖ), which replaced the FPÖ as governing partner. Heinz-Christian Strache then became leader, and the party gradually regained its popularity, peaking at 26.0% in the 2017 election. The FPÖ once again became junior partner in government with the ÖVP. In May 2019, the Ibiza affair led to the collapse of the government and the resignation of Strache from both the offices of vice-chancellor and party leader. The resulting snap election saw the FPÖ fall to 16.2% and return to opposition.

History

Political background

The FPÖ is a descendant of the pan-German and national liberal camp (''Lager'') dating back to the Revolutions of 1848 in the Habsburg areas. During the interwar era, the national liberal camp (gathered in the Greater German People's Party) fought against the mutually hostile Christian Social and Marxist camps in their struggles to structure the new republic according to their respective ideologies. After a short civil war, the Federal State of Austria, an authoritarian Christian Social dictatorship, was established in 1934. By 1938, with the '' Anschluss'' of Austria into Nazi Germany, the national liberal camp (which had always striven for an inclusion of Austria into a Greater Germany) had been swallowed whole by Austrian National Socialism and all other parties were eventually absorbed into Nazi totalitarianism. Both Socialists and Christian Socials were persecuted under the Nazi regime, and the national liberal camp was scarred after the war due to guilt by association with National Socialism.

In 1949, the Federation of Independents (VdU) was founded as a national liberal alternative to the main Austrian parties—the Social Democratic Party (SPÖ) and the Austrian People's Party (ÖVP), successors to the interwar era Marxist and Christian Social parties. The VdU was founded by two liberal Salzburg journalists—former Nazi Germany prisoners—who wanted to stay clear of the mainstream socialist and Catholic camps and feared that hostility following the hastily devised postwar denazification policy (which did not distinguish between party members and actual war criminals) might stimulate a revival of Nazism. Aiming to become a political home to everyone not a member of the two main parties, the VdU incorporated an array of political movements—including free-market liberals, populists, former Nazis and German nationalists, all of whom had been unable to join either of the two main parties. The VdU won 12% of the vote in the 1949 general election, but saw its support beginning to decline soon afterward. It evolved into the FPÖ by 1955/56 after merging with the minor Freedom Party in 1955; a new party was formed on 17 October 1955, and its founding congress was held on 7 April 1956.

Early years (1956–1980)

The first FPÖ party leader was Anton Reinthaller, a former Nazi Minister of Agriculture and SS officer. He had been asked by ÖVP Chancellor Julius Raab to take over the movement rather than let it be led by a more socialist-leaning group. While the majority of former Nazis had probably joined the two main parties in absolute numbers, they formed a greater percentage of FPÖ members due to the party's small size. Nevertheless, none of them were real revolutionaries and they pursued pragmatic, non-ideological policies, and the FPÖ presented itself as a moderate party. The FPÖ served as a vehicle for them to integrate in the Second Republic; the party was a welcome partner with both the SPÖ and ÖVP in regional and local politics, although it was excluded at the national level. The ÖVP and the FPÖ ran a joint candidate for the 1957 presidential election, who lost.

Reinthaller was replaced as leader in 1958 by Friedrich Peter (also a former SS officer), who led the party through the 1960s and 1970s and moved it towards the political centre. In 1966 the ÖVP-SPÖ Grand Coalition which had governed Austria since the war was broken, was put to an end, when the ÖVP gained enough votes to govern alone. SPÖ leader Bruno Kreisky (himself a Jew) defended Peter's past and initiated a political relationship—and a personal friendship—with Peter; in 1970 the FPÖ was, for the first time, able to tolerate an SPÖ minority government. In 1967 the more extreme faction in the FPÖ broke away and established the National Democratic Party, seen by some observers as a final shedding of the party's Nazi legacy. Under the influence of Kreisky, a new generation of liberals brought the FPÖ into the Liberal International in 1978. During the years under Peter the party never won more than 8% of the national vote in general elections, and generally did not have much political significance. It did, however, demand electoral reforms that benefitted smaller parties as the price for tolerating Kreisky's minority government.

Steger leadership (1980–1986)

Liberal Norbert Steger was chosen as new FPÖ party leader in 1980; in an effort to gain popularity, he helped the FPÖ become established as a moderate centrist liberal party. His vision was to transform the FPÖ into an Austrian version of the German Free Democratic Party, focusing on free-market and anti-statist policies. In the 1980s, the Austrian political system began to change; the dominance of the SPÖ and ÖVP started to erode, and the Austrian electorate began to swing to the right. SPÖ leader Bruno Kreisky had encouraged the FPÖ's move to the centre, in order to establish an SPÖ-FPÖ alliance against the ÖVP. The 1983 general election was a watershed; the SPÖ lost its absolute majority in Parliament, which resulted in the formation of an SPÖ-FPÖ "Small Coalition". Ironically, the 1983 election result was the worst for the FPÖ in its history (it received slightly less than 5% of the vote), and during the next few years the party saw 2–3% support—or even less—in opinion polls. As a consequence, the party was soon torn by internal strife.

In 1983, the right-wing Jörg Haider took over the leadership of the FPÖ's significant Carinthia branch. Its importance dated to the ''Kärntner Abwehrkampf'' (Carinthian defensive struggle) following World War I, and subsequent anti-Slavic sentiment arising from a fear of being taken over by Yugoslavia. Encouraged by the mass media, a struggle soon developed between Steger and Haider over the future of the party. In the 1985 Reder case, for instance, Haider staunchly supported FPÖ Minister of Defence Friedhelm Frischenschlager when the latter welcomed convicted '' Waffen-SS'' war criminal Walter Reder in person when Reder arrived at Graz Airport after his release from Italy. While the FPÖ struggled with its low support at the national level in the mid-1980s, this was in sharp contrast to the party's position in Haider's Carinthia (where the party had increased its support from 11.7% in the 1979 provincial election to 16% in 1984).

During the 1986 National Convention in Innsbruck, the internal struggle developed into an open conflict; this led Haider to victory as new FPÖ party leader with 58% of the vote, supported by conservative and pan-German factions. However, incoming SPÖ Chancellor Franz Vranitzky—who also entered office in 1986—had strong negative feelings towards Haider, who he felt was too far-right. Vranitzky subsequently announced an election in 1986, in the process disbanding the SPÖ-FPÖ "Small Coalition" and, after the election, entered into a coalition with the ÖVP. Under Haider's leadership, the FPÖ increased its vote to 9.7%, while the party gradually became more right-wing and its former liberal influence waned. As the FPÖ increased its electoral support with Haider's radical-populist rhetoric, the party reduced its chances of forming coalitions with other parties.

Haider leadership (1986–2000)

With Jörg Haider as the new party leader, the 1989 Carinthia provincial election caused a sensation; the SPÖ lost its majority

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