Path to Power
SPÖ leader Pamela Rendi-Wagner wants to be Austria's first female chancellor. Only her party stands in her way
Servus!
Russia’s war effort continues to be mired on multiple fronts. In the north around the capital Kyiv and in the south around Mykolaiv—the centre of Ukraine’s shipbuilding industry due north-east of Odesa—Vladimir Putin’s advance has stalled in the face of Ukrainian resistance. Russia continues to make gains in the east in the provinces of Donetsk and Luhansk where it is looking to consolidate control. In the west, rocket strikes hit a fuel storage facility in Lviv on Saturday, injuring five people. The number of Ukrainian refugees has climbed to 3.8 million. Last week, Joe Biden said of Putin: “For God’s sake, this man cannot remain in power.”
NATO has upped its presence in eastern Europe, doubling to eight the number of battlegroups it has stationed there. 24,800 NATO troops are now stationed in Hungary, and 15,800 in Slovakia. Last week, as I reported in my previous newsletter, Austria signed onto the EU’s Strategic Compass, which included provision for the establishment of “a strong EU Rapid Deployment Capacity of up to 5000 troops for different types of crises.” Now the country’s defense minister, Klaudia Tanner, wants to increase Austria’s defense budget from 0.62 percent of GDP to 1.5 percent by 2027. That would still be short of the 2 percent requested of NATO members and the 2.5 percent experts believe is required to equip Austria’s military to the point where it could defend the nation in the event of an enemy invasion.
Austria’s status as a neutral country has not prevented Moscow from taking an interest in its politics. Last week, New Lines published emails and documents laying out the coordination between interest groups in Moscow and far-right political parties in western Europe. It was already known that, in December 2016, the far-right Freedom Party (FPÖ) signed a cooperation agreement with Putin’s United Russia. Documentary evidence also indicates Moscow tried to use the FPÖ that same year as a conduit to undermine Austrian sanctions against Russia, with the FPÖ’s Johannes Hübner raising the matter in parliament in June 2016 using language remarkably similar to that laid down in a Russian memo written four months prior.
For those interested in supporting the effort to help Ukrainians displaced by war, the following Austrian or Austrian-backed organizations are accepting donations:
In France and Hungary, where elections are due in the coming weeks, the war in Ukraine has been of short-term benefit for incumbent presidents and prime ministers. The same cannot be said for Austria’s coalition government, which has slipped to a combined 33 percent in the polls—down from almost 52 percent at the last election in 2019. Were an election held tomorrow, 29 percent of eligible Austrians said they would vote for the Social Democratic Party (SPÖ), 22 percent for the People’s Party (ÖVP), and 19 percent for the FPÖ. The Greens would slide down to 11 percent, while the anti-vaxx MFG Party would find representation in parliament for the first time, winning 8 percent of the vote.
For the first time in years, a sense is building within the SPÖ that, come the next election, they may be in a position to nominate a chancellor and build a coalition government. On Sunday morning, SPÖ leader Pamela Rendi-Wagner held an address in Vienna that was billed in the lead-up to it as her ‘chancellor speech.’ In attendance were five former SPÖ chancellors, including Franz Vranitzky, chancellor from 1986 to 1997 during the long period of SPÖ dominance. Absent was Rendi-Wagner’s antithesis in the party, Burgenland governor Hans Peter Doskozil, who said he had to attend his partner’s birthday party in Stuttgart.
The SPÖ, of course, never misses an opportunity to miss an opportunity. In the days prior to Rendi-Wagner’s keystone speech, the party found itself on the wrong side of a dispute over whether Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy should address the Austrian parliament. The liberal NEOS said yes; the SPÖ and FPÖ argued he should not. The SPÖ argued Zelenskyy’s appearance would violate Austria’s ‘permanent neutrality,’ though such an interpretation conflates military and political neutrality. It was not a violation of Austrian neutrality, for example, when SPÖ president Heinz Fischer welcomed Putin in Vienna in 2014 three months after his illegal annexation of Crimea. At times it seems the only obstacle in the way of the SPÖ’s path to power is itself.
Bis bald!
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Refugee Crisis
35,000 Ukrainian refugees have now registered with the authorities in Austria, according to the country’s interior ministry. The first residency permits for Ukrainian refugees allowing them access to the Austrian labor market will be sent out next week.
Climate Change
Parts of Austria have registered the driest start to the year on record, while warm desert winds blowing from the south have driven temperatures in Vienna above 70 degrees fahrenheit. In Carinthia and southern Styria, the last rains were recorded on February 15; in Graz, it hasn’t rained for 40 days.
Foda Fo-done
Austria have failed to qualify for the 2022 football World Cup in Qatar after losing 2-1 to Wales on Thursday night in Cardiff. Coach Franco Foda’s contract is up at the end of the month, and he is expected to be replaced by former Austria Wien and FC Köln boss Peter Stöger.