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Austria Introduction
Unavailable
Figure 1. Administrative Divisions of Austria, 1993
THE AUSTRIAN PEOPLE ENDURED a series of political, social, and
economic upheavals between the outbreak of World War I and the
division of Europe into two hostile blocs shortly after World War
II. In the next few decades, however, they succeeded in
establishing a prosperous and stable democracy. Indeed, they were
so successful that by the 1970s, Austria had come to be widely
characterized as "an island of the blessed" because of the
prosperity of its people and the virtual absence of social
conflict.
Devised in the first decade after War World II, the system of
governing--the social partnership--that made this achievement
possible gave each of Austria's main social groups a decisive say
in the management of the country's affairs. In marked contrast to
the social tensions of the interwar period, which culminated in a
brief civil war in 1934, in the postwar era the representatives
of agriculture, commerce, and labor were able to work together
harmoniously for the benefit of all. By the 1990s, the decades of
prosperity engineered through the system of social partnership
had given Austrians one of the world's highest living standards.
Sustained prosperity and social peace yielded yet another
achievement, the creation of a viable nation supported by the
overwhelming majority of its citizens. Thus, the Austrian state
assembled out of the ruins of the Habsburg Empire at the end of
World War I--said by many to be "the state no one wanted"--was
replaced by one that gradually won the allegiance of its citizens
by providing them with a long period of uninterrupted peace and
prosperity.
At the beginning of the twentieth century, the territory
occupied by present-day Austria had been ruled by the Habsburg
Dynasty for more than 600 years. This territory was the core of
an empire that at its height in the sixteenth century included
Spain and its colonies in the New World, and much of Italy and
the Low Countries. Although a military defeat at the hands of
Prussia in 1866 had weakened Emperor Franz Joseph I (r. 1848-
1916) and had obliged him to make such significant concessions to
his Hungarian subjects the following year that the lands he ruled
came to be known as Austria-Hungary (also seen as the Austro-
Hungarian Empire), his empire remained one of Europe's great
powers. In the last decades of the nineteenth century, it allied
itself with Germany and Italy and in the years leading up to
World War I actively pursued an aggressive foreign policy to
extend Habsburg influence farther south in the Balkans.
The Habsburg Empire was supranational in nature. Many ethnic
groups lived within its boundaries, including Germans, Czechs,
Slovaks, Poles, Hungarians, Slovenes, Croats, Serbs, and
Romanians. Most of the empire's German-speaking subjects lived in
the territory that makes up present-day Austria, but significant
numbers also lived in Bohemia, Moravia, and Silesia, and smaller
numbers were found throughout the empire. Although the Hungarians
had been granted the right to govern themselves and to have a
significant say in determining the empire's affairs, German
speakers remained dominant within the empire. Their dominance had
gone on for centuries, although they made up only one-fourth of
the population. Perhaps owing to their privileged status, the
German speakers were more loyal to the empire than any other
ethnic group. They did not see themselves as Austrian, however,
but instead felt a strong local patriotism for their native
provinces. They also thought of themselves as belonging to the
German cultural community, a community found not only in Austria
but also in Germany, and Switzerland, and anywhere else German
was spoken.
Germany's unification in 1871 under Prussian leadership after
many centuries of division was only the most notable result of
the powerful force of nationalism that appeared in many areas of
Europe in the nineteenth century. Just to the south of the
Habsburg Empire, for example, the many small states of the
Italian peninsula had come together to form a united Italy. The
nationalist ideal also came to touch with an ever-growing
strength many of the peoples living within the Habsburg Empire.
It was an ideal completely at variance with the supranational
foundations of the empire and would in the end lead to its
destruction. As nationalism gained in influence, growing numbers
of the empire's inhabitants came to believe that they more
rightly owed allegiance to their own ethnic group than to a
ruling elite speaking a different language.
In response to the nationalist movements emerging within
Austria-Hungary, the empire's German speakers formed their own
political groups, often described as German nationalist-liberal,
to protect their rights. Because the German-speaking community
remained loyal to Emperor Franz Joseph, few of its members wished
to see the areas in which they lived secede from the empire and
become part of the newly united and powerful Germany. Their aims
were to maintain their privileged position within the empire and
to ensure that the German language did not lose ground to the
empire's other languages.
In addition to the German nationalist-liberal parties active
in the late nineteenth century, German speakers created political
parties that had other goals. The Social Democratic Workers'
Party and the Christian Social Party were the most important
political parties. The former sought to establish a socialist
society based on Marxist principles. The latter sought to improve
society, particularly (but not exclusively) rural society, by
emphasizing Christian values and traditions. Because the
memberships of both parties were largely German speaking, they
had some sympathy with the aims of the empire's German
nationalists. Their main concerns, however, were elsewhere.
World War I was set off by the June 1914 assassination of
Archduke Franz Ferdinand, heir to the Habsburg throne, by Serbian
nationalists. Within weeks, a system of interlocking alliances
set the Great Powers of Europe against one another. By the war's
end in November 1918, the Habsburg Empire had ceased to exist.
Some of the empire's ethnic groups formed new nations. A German
Austrian state was established on October 21, 1918. On November
12, 1918, one day after the war ended, the new state was declared
a republic.
The new Austrian state was only one-fourth as large as the
empire. In the eyes of many of its citizens, it was a mere "rump
state" and was neither economically nor socially viable. Many
argued that it logically should be part of Germany. The war's
victors--the United States, Britain, and France--feared such a
union would strengthen Germany, and they prohibited it. They also
required that the new state be called the Republic of Austria
rather than the German Austria. Despite the Allied prohibition,
desire for union with Germany remained strong in Austria,
particularly among German nationalist-liberals and socialists.
Shorn of many of the traditional economic connections it had
had within the empire, Austria was poorly positioned to prosper.
Its struggling economy was also hurt by the European economic
slump of the early 1920s. The new republic's economic troubles
diminished the support it needed from its citizens to survive.
Rather than joining together to build a nation, Austrians sought
social and economic security by withdrawing into the three large
social groups, or camps (lager), that predated the war:
German nationalist-liberal, socialist, and Christian Social.
Austrians usually gave their loyalty to the Lager in
which they were born rather than to the country as a whole. Each
Lager maintained a network of organizations such as credit
unions, sports clubs, home mortgage funds, and the like that
ministered to the economic and social needs of its members. Thus,
contact among Austrians of different social backgrounds was
lessened.
The hostility the groups felt for one another increased their
inner cohesion. Socialist plans to establish a society founded on
Marxist principles frightened the right-wing German nationalist-
liberals and Christian Socials and heightened their determination
to defend their property. Socialist and German nationalist-
liberal anticlericalism caused Christian Socials to be more
resolute in defending their religious values. German nationalist-
liberal and Christian Social anti-Semitism caused many Austrian
Jews to become active in the socialist movement. This in turn
meant that many on the right came to hate socialism even more
because they saw it as a Jewish-controlled conspiracy to subvert
all cherished values.
In response to animosity the Lager felt for one other,
armed militias were soon formed. The right-wing militia joined at
times with state forces to oppose the socialists. Organized
violence became frequent as the Christian Socials combined with
the German nationalist-liberals to exclude socialists from the
national government. Socialists governed only in Vienna. The many
leftist social measures they enacted in "Red Vienna" further
hardened conservative opposition.
A failed uprising in February 1934, in which the socialists
sought to stand up to the central authorities, marked the
definitive end of Austrian parliamentary democracy, already
partially suspended the previous year. The Christian Social
Engelbert Dollfuss established a right-wing authoritarian regime
that attempted to govern Austria according to Christian
principles. Austrian National Socialists, or Nazis, who desired
to unite Austria with Germany, then ruled by Adolf Hitler,
assassinated Dollfuss in July 1934. They were not strong enough
to seize power, however, and the Dollfuss regime continued under
the leadership of Kurt von Schuschnigg.
Despite the failed Nazi coup d'état, agitation for
annexation, or Anschluss, of Austria by Germany continued.
Schuschnigg resisted Hitler's demands for Anschluss for a time,
but in March 1938 German troops occupied Austria. Because most
Austrians felt little loyalty to their country, its seizure by
Germany was widely supported, even by many socialists.
Austria was quickly and thoroughly absorbed by Nazi Germany.
The country's new rulers attempted to expunge all traces of an
independent Austria by ruthless personnel and administrative
practices. Even the name Austria was replaced by a new
designation--Ostmark. Austrians were drafted into the
German army, the Wehrmacht, and when World War II began, they
fought until Germany's unconditional surrender in May 1945.
Austria's human and material losses from the war were great.
Furthermore, the country was divided into four zones, each
occupied by one of the victorious Allies: the United States,
Britain, France, and the Soviet Union. Under the watchful eyes of
the occupation powers, Austrians reestablished a government based
on the constitution of 1920, as amended in 1929. This second
attempt of Austrians to govern themselves in a parliamentary
democracy proved eminently successful. In what came to be called
the Second Republic, Austrians enjoyed a long period of social
peace and prosperity.
A key reason for the success of the Second Republic was the
manifest failure of the First Republic (1918-38). Confronted with
a defeat of this magnitude, Austrian politicians vowed not to
repeat the mistakes of the earlier period. Leaders of opposing
parties imprisoned together in Nazi concentration camps discussed
what was needed to rebuild their country and agreed to play down
the ideological differences that had made interwar politics so
bitter. In addition, Nazi barbarities gave them good reason to
emphasize what distinguished Austria from Germany.
External forces also contributed to the eventual success of
the Second Republic. The occupation of Austria by foreign troops
and the need to resist their demands encouraged a new Austrian
unity, as opposed to the lethal divisiveness of the First
Republic. Furthermore, the gradual extinguishing of political
freedom in Eastern Europe in the first years after World War II
made the principles of parliamentary democracy more attractive
than they had been in the interwar period. The Soviet Union's
practices in its occupation zone were a daily affront to
Austrians and discredited political groups not committed to
parliamentary democracy. In the interwar period, in contrast, no
political party had fully supported this form of government, and
several had been actively opposed to it.
In addition to failing to establish a working democracy
during the First Republic, Austrians also had failed to put in
place a nation supported by most of its citizens. During the
Second Republic--likewise born in defeat at the end of a world
war--a stable, prosperous society was created that with time
engendered in its members a sense of pride in their Austrian
identity. This feeling of a national identity was new. As late as
1956, only 49 percent of Austrians believed that they constituted
a nation, whereas 46 percent saw themselves as Germans. Several
decades of success as a nation altered the views of most
Austrians on this matter. An opinion poll in 1989, for example,
found that 78 percent of Austrians agreed that they constituted a
nation, and only 9 percent held that they did not.
After World War I, Austria's economy floundered for a time,
improved in the second half of the 1920s, then collapsed with the
onset of the Great Depression. In contrast to this failure, after
World War II an initial period of hardship was followed by
decades of economic growth, which has continued into the 1990s.
In the first years after World War II, Austrians nationalized
a large portion of their economy to protect it from foreign
seizure, particularly by the Soviet Union. They also worked out
mechanisms to involve the main participants in the economy--
agriculture, commerce, and labor--in determining democratically
how the economy was to be managed. During the 1950s and 1960s,
further bargaining institutions were created, most notably the
Parity Commission for Prices and Wages, that involved economic
interest groups and the government in major economic decisions.
The resulting system, the social partnership, is responsible for
the extremely low incidence of strikes in Austria and the
sustained stability crucial for economic growth.
The economy fostered by the social partnership has grown
steadily in the postwar period, often at growth rates above the
Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development
(OECD--see Glossary)
average. Between 1955 and 1990, the economy increased
in size by two-and-one-half times. In step with the rest of
Western Europe, the Austrian economy modernized quickly.
Agriculture, still a significant part of the economy in the
1950s, by the early 1990s provided only about one-twentieth of
the work force with employment and accounted for an even smaller
share of the gross domestic product
(GDP--see Glossary). In 1970
the industrial sector and the services sector accounted for
roughly equal shares of GDP; by the 1990s the latter had become
twice the size of the former and provided jobs for more than half
the work force.
Although Austrian industry has a smaller place in the overall
economy than it did earlier in the postwar period, it has become
more specialized and produces high-quality goods that are
competitive on the world market. Despite its small size, Austria
is an active participant in the global economy, and foreign
trade, two-thirds of it with the European Union
(EU--see Glossary),
accounts for two-fifths of GDP. A persistent trade
deficit is largely offset by high earnings from tourism.
Austria's place in the global economy has made imperative its
membership in international economic organizations, such as the
European Free Trade Association
(EFTA--see Glossary) and the
European Economic Area
(EEA--see Glossary). Austria is scheduled
to become a member of the EU on January 1, 1995.
The expanding economy has brought higher living standards for
nearly all Austrians. Automobile ownership and travel abroad are
commonplace, and an ever-widening range of state-supervised
social benefits has made material want a thing of the past for
ordinary Austrians. Sustained prosperity and a modernizing
economy have permitted many Austrians to find better employment
than did their parents. White-collar salaried employees now
outnumber blue-collar workers. Much of the menial work is done by
foreigners, who first began to arrive in significant numbers in
the early 1960s and who at times have made up nearly 10 percent
of the work force.
The great increase in white-collar employment permitted a
tenfold increase in the number of Austrians enrolled at
institutions of higher learning between the mid-1950s and the
early 1990s. The upgrading of education at lower levels, such as
specialized vocational training, is also impressive. As a result,
many Austrians who themselves attended only elementary school
have seen their children receive an education that results in
well-paid skilled employment.
Social mobility has eroded the interwar division of Austria
into Lager. The farming sector has dwindled into
insignificance. In addition, the traditional blue-collar working
class has diminished both in size and in cohesion as workers have
become more middle class in their habits and expectations because
of improvements in their housing, working conditions, and general
standard of living. Many of their children have entered the ever-
expanding middle class, which is no longer closed to outsiders.
Younger Austrians, growing up in a more prosperous and
egalitarian society than their parents, not only earn their
livelihood in new ways but also have different social and
political attitudes than the older generation.
In the decades after World War II, Austrian society has
become more secularized. Regular church attendance has declined
sharply, although the number of Austrians who have officially
withdrawn from the Roman Catholic Church in this overwhelmingly
Roman Catholic country has increased only slightly. The church
itself has changed, withdrawing from the active and polarizing
role it played in the interwar period. It speaks out only on
issues it regards as within its legitimate sphere of interest.
One such issue has been abortion. In the early 1970s, the church
waged an ultimately unsuccessful campaign against the
legalization of abortion.
The role of women also has changed in this new social
environment. The so-called three Ks of Kinder,
Kirche, and Küche (children, church, and kitchen)
no longer dominate women's lives to the extent they did in the
past. Marriage is no longer seen as the only socially acceptable
goal of a woman's life. Families are smaller, and by the 1990s
the birthrate was below that needed for the population to
increase. Divorce is more frequent, as is cohabitation by
unmarried couples. The number of illegitimate births also has
risen, although most of these children are subsequently
legitimized by marriage.
Women now work outside the home in greater numbers than in
the past. Although as of the first half of the 1990s women still
earned less than men at all levels of employment, more women than
ever before hold responsible positions. Some of the country's
foremost politicians are women, and the number of seats held by
women in the nation's lower house of parliament, the Nationalrat
(National Council), increased from eleven in 1970 to thirty-nine
in 1994. Laws have been passed to improve women's position in
society. The Equal Treatment Law of 1979 mandates equal pay for
equal work, and the Women's Omnibus Law of 1993 aims at
increasing the employment of women in government agencies.
The economic and social changes Austria underwent in the
postwar era began to affect the country's political life only in
the second half of the 1980s. It was during this period that the
dominance of political life by two large parties--a dominance
that began immediately after World War II--began to be threatened
by several smaller parties. Representing two of the country's
three traditional social camps, the two parties are the Socialist
Party of Austria, known since 1991 as the Social Democratic Party
of Austria (Sozialdemokratische Partei Österreichs--SPÖ), the
successor to the Socialists, and the Austrian People's Party
(Österreichische Volkspartei--ÖVP), descended from the Christian
Socials.
The SPÖ and ÖVP have governed Austria since 1945, often
together in coalition governments. The latest of these so-called
grand coalitions was formed in November 1994. Until 1970 the ÖVP
was generally the stronger of the two parties. In that year,
however, the SPÖ was led to power by the able and extremely
popular Bruno Kreisky, who remained chancellor until 1983. In
1986 another effective leader, Franz Vranitzky, took over the SPÖ
and through his personal popularity has been able keep the party
in power even though the party's share of the vote has declined
steadily.
However strong their political rivalry may be, both parties
are committed to democracy, and they have adopted less
ideological positions than did their predecessors in the interwar
period. Decades of governing together have reduced the
ideological differences between the two parties, and both support
maintaining Austria's mixed economy and social welfare state.
They have also been bound together by the elaborate patronage
system of dividing between them the right to fill many positions
in government agencies, in the extensive social welfare system,
in the numerous bodies that make up the social partnership
system, and in the large state-owned business enterprises.
Because appointments to these positions often depend more on
party membership than on qualifications, there have been
instances of corruption and incompetence.
As an indication of the overall success of the SPÖ and ÖVP in
governing Austria in the postwar era, only in 1990 did their
joint share of the vote in a national election drop below 80
percent. In fact, in many national elections their joint share
has been over 90 percent. Beginning in 1986, however, their
support began to fall steadily. In the national election of
October 1994, they received only 62.6 percent of the vote. The
decline stems in part from the slow breakup of the Lager,
which had loyal voting habits, and the emergence of a sizable
pool of "floating voters," no longer invariably tied to the SPÖ
or to the ÖVP.
The decline of the large parties also stems from voter
dissatisfaction with the inefficiency and corruption of
traditional political practices of governing the country and the
emergence of new issues in a rapidly changing economy and
society. The most serious challenger to the two main parties is a
right-wing populist party formed in 1956, the Freedom Party of
Austria (Freiheitliche Partei Österreichs--FPÖ), descended from
prewar German nationalist-liberal groups. The party had seemed
doomed to extinction until a young politician, Jörg Haider,
seized control of it in 1986 and through his dynamic leadership
increased its share of the vote to 9.7 percent in that year's
national election. The FPÖ nearly doubled its share in the
national election of 1990 and won 22.5 percent of the vote in the
national election of October 1994. This last victory occurred
despite a split within the FPÖ in early 1993, when some of its
members left to form a new party, The Liberal Forum (Das Liberale
Forum). These members disagreed with Haider's position on
foreigners in Austria and his departure from classic positions of
European liberalism.
A superbly gifted politician, Haider has campaigned as a
conservative populist, speaking out against the SPÖ-ÖVP decades-
long stewardship of the country's affairs. He has exploited the
anger of many voters at the pervasive cronyism and corruption of
the SPÖ-ÖVP coalition and promised to end its system of
patronage. Despite his clearly expressed hostility to socialism
and the role of government in general, he has been able to
successfully court many blue-collar SPÖ voters worried by the
challenges posed to their country's small economy by a united
Europe. With what many regard as demagogy, he has won votes by
addressing that portion of the electorate who are concerned about
the foreign presence in Austria and who fear Überfremdung,
that is, Austria's submersion in a flood of foreign immigrants
fleeing the social and economic chaos of Eastern Europe.
Traditional politics has also been challenged by the
emergence of an environmentalist movement. Widespread economic
security has freed young Austrians from immediate practical
concerns and has allowed them to become concerned with longer-
term issues such as protection of the environment. Galvanized by
the construction of a large SPÖ-sponsored nuclear power plant in
1978, citizen groups focusing on the environment were formed;
shortly thereafter, several environmentalist parties were
established. In 1986 environmentalists were first elected to the
Nationalrat; they have increased their share of the vote in each
national election since. In the national election of 1994, the
largest environmentalist party, The Greens (Die Grünen) won
thirteen seats.
The European trend toward unification has also altered
Austrian politics. In the first half of the 1990s, Austria's
possible membership in the EU was likely the issue of greatest
significance for the country's future. In 1989 Austria applied
for admission to the European Community
(EC--see Glossary), the
predecessor of the EU. An interim step before admission was the
January 1994 entry into the EEA. After years of negotiations with
EC officials, in which the central points were protection of the
environment, foreign ownership of real estate property, and farm
subsidies, the SPÖ-ÖVP government called for a June 1994
referendum about EU membership.
The referendum was hotly contested. Although 66.4 percent of
the electorate voted in favor of EU membership, the outcome of
the vote was uncertain until the end. In addition to the SPÖ-ÖVP
coalition, The Liberal Forum also supported membership. The most
eloquent spokesman for this position was the minister for foreign
affairs, Alois Mock, who had conducted the difficult negotiations
concerning the conditions under which Austria would join the EU.
In the late 1980s, Mock had persuaded his party, the ÖVP, that it
should advocate Austria's becoming part of a united Europe. The
SPÖ gradually came to the same view, even though EU membership
would conflict with Austria's traditional neutrality. The EU has
as a long-term goal not only economic unity but also a common
foreign and security policy, which would by its nature preclude
neutrality. Proponents of EU membership argued that it would
bring economic benefits and contribute to the nation's security
in a new and rapidly changing world.
Opponents of EU membership included many Austrian
intellectuals, environmentalists, and the FPÖ, which had reversed
its previously positive stance. Opponents argued that membership
would bring a loss of Austrian sovereignty and that bureaucrats
in Brussels would come to exert a suffocating control over the
country's affairs. They feared that Austria's national identity
might gradually be lost in a united Europe, given the country's
small size. Haider justified his party's change of opinion by
saying that it still desired European unity, but not one in which
Austrian liberty was so restricted.
The overwhelming support voters gave to EU membership was a
win for the coalition, but support came from many sectors of
society, not just from traditional SPÖ and ÖVP voters. In fact,
some members of the SPÖ and ÖVP opposed their parties' position
because they feared the social and economic consequences of
membership. This drop in support can be seen by comparing the
two-thirds majority the two parties received din the referendum,
version the three-quarters majority the coalition received in the
1990 national election.
The national election of October 9, 1994, was a resounding
setback for the coalition. Both parties suffered significant
losses in this election, which had an 82 percent voter turnout.
The SPÖ remained the largest party in the Nationalrat. However,
its share of the vote fell from 42.8 percent in the 1990 election
to 34.9 percent, and its number of seats in the 183-member body
fell from eighty to sixty-five. The ÖVP fared nearly as badly.
Its share of the vote dropped from 32.1 percent in 1990 to 27.7
percent in 1994, and its share of seats fell from sixty to fifty-
two. The FPÖ continued its upward trend by increasing its share
of the vote, going from 16.6 percent in 1990 to 22.5 percent in
1994, and by winning forty-two seats, compared with thirty-three
seats four years earlier. The largest of the environmentalist
parties, The Greens, increased its share of the vote from 4.8
percent to 7.3 percent and the number of its seats from ten to
thirteen. The Liberal Forum, in its first national election, won
6.0 percent of the vote and gained eleven seats.
The election showed that the political trends that had been
under way through the 1980s had continued. The SPÖ-ÖVP share of
the vote continued to drop precipitously, amounting to only 62.6
percent in 1994. As a result of these losses, the SPÖ-ÖVP
coalition government formed in late November 1994 with Vranitzky
as chancellor will not have the two-thirds majority needed to
pass some legislation.
The election was a triumph for Haider, who throughout its
course had determined the issues on which the election was
fought: the threat of foreign immigration to the welfare of
ordinary Austrians; and the incompetence and corruption of the
pervasive system of governmental, party, and economic interest
organizations that the SPÖ and ÖVP coalition had devised and that
was suffocating the country's social and economic life. Haider
saw his victory as merely another step toward becoming chancellor
in 1998. To reach this goal, he has begun transforming his party
into a political movement similar to that headed by Ross Perot in
the United States. Whether or not Haider achieves his goal, he is
likely to remain one of Austria's foremost politicians because of
his skill in raising issues that have become central concerns to
voters facing the challenges of the new Europe emerging after the
end of the Cold War.
The end of the Cold War and the breakup not only of the
Warsaw Pact but also of some of the countries that belonged to it
have ended the decades of relative stability in Central Europe.
In addition, in the early 1990s Yugoslavia, Austria's neighbor to
the south, also broke into a number of separate states in the
early 1990s, some of which were soon at war. Large numbers of
refugees have fled to Austria and other Western countries,
seeking temporary or permanent asylum. As a result of these
events, Austria, once securely tucked away in one corner of
Western Europe and sheltered from the East by the Iron Curtain,
has come to occupy a more exposed and less secure position in
Central Europe.
In the postwar era, Austria has pursued a neutral and active
foreign policy. The State Treaty of 1955 ended the country's
occupation by foreign troops and restored its sovereignty. As a
condition for winning its independence, Austria pledged itself to
permanent neutrality and promised never to join a military
alliance or to allow foreign troops to be stationed on its
territory. Lying between the two military alliances of the Cold
War, Austria became an intermediary between the two blocs. Vienna
became the home to international organizations and the site of
important international meetings. An Austrian diplomat, Kurt
Waldheim, was secretary general of the United Nations (1971-81),
and Austrian military forces regularly participated in that
organization's multinational peacekeeping missions around the
world.
In the post-Cold War environment, however, Austria's active
neutrality is seen by many as no longer relevant. Hence, policy
makers are searching for a security policy better adapted to
Austria's newly exposed position. Entry into the EU will reduce
Austria's foreign policy independence and its traditional
neutrality. Austria is expected to apply for observer status in
the Western European Union
(WEU--see Glossary) after it joins the
EU and is likely to eventually become a member of this security
organization. Austria's foreign policy makers maintain that there
is no conflict between being a member of the WEU and maintaining
the constitutional pledge of permanent neutrality, stating that
it is Austria's right to interpret its neutrality. Whatever new
security agreements are entered into later in the 1990s, however,
Austria's policy of permanent and active neutrality, at least as
it has so far been practiced, is probably nearing an end.
The likely extension of EU membership early in the next
century to East European nations with free-market economies and
parliamentary democracy will also reduce Austria's postwar role
as an intermediary between East and West. As a result of the new
Europe forming after the political and economic revolutions
beginning in 1989, Austria is faced with abandoning the foreign
policies that have served it so well in the postwar era. However,
Austria will meet this new international environment not as a
small poor nation surrounded by more powerful neighbors, as it
did twice in the twentieth century after defeats in world wars,
but as a prosperous and stable society and an integral part of a
united Europe.
December 5, 1994
Eric Solsten
Data as of December 1993
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