The right-wing nationalist party Freiheitliche Partei Österreichs (FPÖ) won the Austrian parliamentary election for the first time in the country's history. Despite the recent devastating floods, the climate-denying and pro-Russia party won the most votes. Now possibly a darker future awaits the EU's support for Ukraine, because the FPÖ wants to completely abolish it, writes Agnes Fältman.
- We got what we expected, writes a friend in a text message late on Sunday evening on September 29.
For a year and a half I have lived in Vienna, where I and among other things has been FUF correspondent for Uttvecklingsmagasinet. Now there have been elections in Austria and the right-wing populist party FPÖ has for the first time in the country's history became the largest in the parliamentary election. This does not seem to have surprised anyone, based on what my acquaintances have told me and on the tone of the Austrian press. I myself was not the least bit surprised.
That the FPÖ would get the whole 28,8 percent of the votes, however, there were not as many as had been expected. In the EU elections in June this year, the FPÖ became the largest in the country, but the moderate government party Österreichische Volkspartei (ÖVP) and the Austrian Social Democrats were then not far behind. In the national election, on the other hand, the FPÖ got 2,5 percentage points more than the ÖVP — a disaster election for the governing party.
Not even the devastating storm Boris and the subsequent floods that affected large parts of Austria could upset the FPÖ's strong voter support. Scientists mean that man-made climate change made the storm and its damage across Central Europe worse. The FPÖ, on the other hand, believes that there is one "climate hysteria" in society, that this is fed up by Brussels, and instead wants to continue importing fossil gas from Russia.
It worries many Austrians I spoke to that the Russia-friendly and EU-sceptic party, which was founded by Nazis in the 1950s, now crushed the opposition in the election. Hundreds of people have protested in front of the parliament in Vienna and in the cities Innsbruck and Salzburg. It is above all the controversial party leader Herbert Kickl's statements that have attracted attention.
Namely, he calls himself "People's Chancellor", a title widely used by Adolf Hitler. Herbert Kickl also thinks that Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, who successively dismantled Hungarian democracy close ties to Russia, is "a role model for many in Europe".
That FPÖ closed one in 2016 "friendship agreement" with Russian President Vladimir Putin's party and today wants stop the EU's aid to Ukraine has hardly made the party less popular. Rather the opposite.
This may seem strange in a country that not too long ago had to experience a Soviet occupation at home. After World War II, Austria, like its big brother Nazi Germany, was divided into four parts ruled by the four victorious powers, the United States, Great Britain, France and the Soviet Union. Parts of Vienna as well as the entire eastern states of Lower Austria and Burgenland lived under Soviet oppression until 1955.
I have heard grandparents from there tell about the rapes and the looting of the villages that became commonplace when the Russians ruled and ruled. A brutal but well-known approach like today repeated by the Russians in Ukraine. That it is precisely in these rural regions that the FPÖ has great support today can therefore be difficult to understand.
Men det som ownagain puttrar under the surface, apart from a great dissatisfaction with inflation and immigration, is that many perceive the image of Austria as a neutral country as threatened. During the Cold War, the country was a bridge builder between East and West and often invited to peace conferences.
Since Austria joined the EU in 1995 and in connection with Russia's invasion of Ukraine, the country has been successively forced to choose a moral side. But FPÖ is still protesting and takes advantage of the voters' continuance negative attitude towards NATO. Austria was forced to become neutral in order to regain its independence from the occupiers in 1955, but the belief that neutrality even today would free the EU country from having to take an active position against Russia is highly naive.
The progress of the right-wing nationalist Freedom Party is, however, not shocking from a European perspective. In several EU countries such as Italy, the Netherlands, Slovakia, and of course also in Sweden, right-wing populist parties are in government and have many seats in the EU Parliament.
What should now worry Europe's politicians even more is the pro-Putin wave that is rapidly spreading across the continent, with the FPÖ as the latest example. First it was in Hungary, then in Slovakia and now also in the majority of German states, where both the far-right Alternative for Germany party and left-populist Bündnis Sahra Wagenknecht achieved great success with pro-Russian political messages.
The FPÖ's electoral gains in Austria — both in the EU elections in June and in the parliamentary elections in September — are therefore a feather in Vladimir Putin's cap. And another dark cloud of worry for Ukraine.