Ten days before crucial legislative elections in Austria with an announced advance by the extreme right, the Austrian Parliament debated, on Wednesday 18 September, a popular initiative petition signed by more than 100,000 voters calling for the adoption “a constitutional provision that explicitly prohibits the Republic of Austria from joining NATO”. While the majority of the parties represented in the National Council recalled on this occasion their attachment to the historical neutrality of this small Alpine country, only one took the opportunity to repeat Russian propaganda word for word.
“We do not want young Austrians to be forced to go to war. (…) for the self-proclaimed global police that is the United States [ou] “because of the geopolitical interests of Ursula von der Leyen,” This was the criticism of Volker Reifenberger, the Austrian Freedom Party (FPÖ) MP responsible for defence issues, without a single criticism of the role of Vladimir Putin’s Russia in the resurgence of war in Europe. The far-right party, which has received around 27 percent of the vote in the polls, could make a splash in the general elections on 29 September by coming out on top in the vote for the first time in its history.
But its current leader, Herbert Kickl, 55, has been campaigning for months, saying that if he becomes chancellor he intends to return his country of 9 million people to a very strict view of neutrality. “Austria must remain neutral”The FPÖ insists, repeating that it will oppose European sanctions against Moscow or that it will do everything possible to maintain gas supplies to Russia, despite the European commitment to withdraw Russian gas by 2027. If Austria has never supplied weapons to Ukraine under its neutrality, the FPÖ wants to add a ban on allowing weapons from other European countries to pass through its territory to Kiev.
“We demand that Austria be a weapons-free zone”Reifenberger recalled on September 11 during a press conference intended to denounce the new national security strategy presented by the current eco-conservative government, which considers that, in the face of the Russian threat, it is “Essential to strengthen the possibilities of cooperation with NATO”. The FPÖ also rejects Austria’s participation in the European anti-missile shield project Sky Shield currently being developed by Germany, considering that “a hidden membership in NATO”.
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