Chapter 9 European Parliamentary Elections in Austria “Gone Ibiza”
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Abstract
Ever since Austria joined the European Union in 1995, Austrians have been among the most Eurosceptic nations in Western Europe, mobilised by the far-right, populist Freedom Party of Austria (fpö), one of the first of its kind. Despite being in government with the historically pro-European Austrian People’s Party (övp) since early 2018, the fpö has not changed really their position towards the EU and was still part of the Europe of Nations and Freedom (enf) group in the European Parliament. Accordingly, the fpö faced a dilemma between maintaining cooperation within the government and continuing their successful Eurosceptic electoral strategy.
The ep campaign in Austria was mainly concerned with domestic political issues and debates about the party lists. Particularly, the lead candidates of the two governing parties managed to portray themselves as two pols of the political spectrum regarding Austria’s position towards the EU: Karas (övp) as a pro-European politician and Vilimsky (fpö) as the critical, anti-Brussels politician. This debate and the prior discussion regarding the lead candidate of the övp left little space for the opposition parties that were partially occupied with internal issues stemming from the national parliamentary election of 2017 (spö andGreens). Even the liberal neos with a very clear and pro-European campaign for a “European republic” did not really manage to draw attention to their manifesto.
In addition to the strong focus on the two governing parties, the so-called “Ibiza-tape” occupied most of the public discussions, leaving not much space for topics related to the European Union. Nine days before the European elections took place, a short videotape displaying two leading fpö politicians offering political deals to a fake niece of a Russian oligarch caused massive political turbulences in Austria. The video led to the end of the national governing coalition and meant the (preliminary) end of the political career of the head of the fpö and Vice Chancellor Heinz-Christian Strache.
Quite surprisingly, the effect of the scandal on the election outcomes was only minimal, yet the domestic consequences were overwhelming, including a government breakup and snap national elections that took place in September 2019. The övp and Greens were the clear winners of the European elections, while the Social Democrats neither benefitted from the scandal, nor from their opposition role.