Austrian News & Politics

[Jubal]

We have a government! A hasty second round of Black-Red-Pink talks has produced a deal, and today the last hurdle was passed as the NEOS party conference voted for it with about 94% in favour (said party conference also reportedly decided that their favourite animals were cats, which is very important news).

So the ÖVP retain the chancellery under Christian Stocker, Andi Babler of the SPÖ is vice-chancellor, and NEOS' Beate Meinl-Reisinger is the Foreign Minister. Other key ministries: Interior and Defence stay with the ÖVP, as do energy, agriculture, and family affairs. The Finance ministry is with SPÖ-nominated economist Markus Marterbauer, and the SPÖ also have transport, justice, health, and science. NEOS get education as their second ministry.

The agreed platform is somewhat austerity-focused: per European-level fiscal rules Austria has been overspending. The SPÖ wanted to go in on wealth taxes to solve the problem: that won't happen, but they have managed to negotiate a bank levy, along with some savings from departments and the end of the 'climate bonus' which was a key Green policy intended to buy support for climate measures with a directly connected repayment to households. The overall vibes are strongly pro-EU. Mass digital surveillance also seems to have been kept out of the plans which is good news.

[Jubal]

Vienna has voted! The state election here was today.

The results were fairly as expected. The Social Democrats (SPÖ) lost a couple of percentage points but are still clearly the leading party on 39%, and will have the Conservative ÖVP, Right-liberal Neos, and the Greens as potential coalition partners. The Greens roughly matched their previous results with small losses (14.5%), the ÖVP had their vote share halved and got knocked into single digits (9.7%) which must sting, and NEOS gained two or three points to push the ÖVP into fifth place with their 9.9%.

The FPÖ as expected had big gains, as the last Viennese election was not long after the Ibiza scandal when they were nationally doing horribly in the polls. Their gains were mostly from the Conservatives, and still well short of their best Vienna results in the past. They're in second on 20.4% but any cooperation with the SPÖ has been ruled out so they won't be in government.

The Communists doubled their vote share and got to 4.2%, but still short of the 5% they needed for the state parliament. Nobody else got close - the HC Strache list, run by a former FPÖ leader, didn't even get 2%.

My guess would be that the SPÖ-NEOS coalition will continue, but the SPÖ is in a pretty good negotiating position all round.