Predecessor party VdU
The Verband der Unabhängigen (VdU) was an association of various interest groups: In addition to many former National Socialists who did not have the right to vote in the first National Council elections after the war in 1945, it also included supporters of the no longer existing parties Landbund and Großdeutsche Volkspartei, who aspired to a "third camp" alongside the two major parties of the Social Democrats (SPÖ) and the Christian Socialists (ÖVP). Conflicts arose over the orientation of the party, which led to splits.
Beginnings of the FPÖ
On 5 June 1955 a Freedom Party of Carinthia was founded out of the Carinthian VdU.
After several electoral defeats and internal turbulence, the FPÖ was founded in a constituent meeting on 3 November 1955. The Carinthian Freedom Party fitted into this structure and adapted its name, but remained an independent body. On 7 April 1956 the founding party congress was held in Vienna-Josefstadt, and Anton Reinthaller, a former SS brigade leader who had been imprisoned from 1950 to 1953 for National Socialist activities as a severely incriminated person, was elected as the first party chairman. Reinthaller, who had joined the NSDAP even before Austria's "Anschluss," held the post of Nazi Minister of Agriculture in the Anschluss Cabinet of Seyß-Inquart in 1938, and was subsequently a member of the Reichstag until 1945, declared in his inaugural speech: "In its essence, the national idea means nothing other than the confession of belonging to the German people." In 1966, conflict arose in the party after the then party chairman Friedrich Peter sought to strike a balance between national and liberal sections of the party. This effort met with criticism from right-wing extremist, especially fraternal elements in the party, and as a result the National Democratic Party split.
For many years the FPÖ achieved only about 6 % of the votes, less than its predecessor VdU. Nevertheless, it was courted by both the SPÖ and the ÖVP as a possible "tipping point". In 1970 the FPÖ, then led by Friedrich Peter, a former Waffen-SS Obersturmführer, temporarily supported an SPÖ minority government. In the 1971 National Council election, the SPÖ achieved an absolute majority. In return for its previous support, the SPÖ pushed for a new electoral law that put smaller parties at less of a disadvantage. Under party leader Alexander Götz, the FPÖ became a member of the Liberal International on 5 October 1979.
At the party congress in 1980 the liberal wing prevailed in a combat vote. After the National Council elections of 1983 (weakest result in its history: 5.0 %), the FPÖ was able to achieve government participation for the first time with Norbert Steger as Vice-Chancellor in an SPÖ-FPÖ coalition. Steger strove to give the party a more liberal image and to win over new groups of voters.
In the following years, the FPÖ remained attached to its pan-Germanic, German-national roots. There is evidence of statements to this effect by both Defence Minister Friedhelm Frischenschlager and Justice Minister Harald Ofner. Frischenschlager also caused international irritation when in 1985, at that time Minister of Defence of the Republic, he greeted the Nazi war criminal Walter Reder with a handshake on his return to Austria. Norbert Burger, former federal chairman of the Freedom Students' Ring, a member of the FPÖ until 1963, and the first chairman of the Austrian NDP, which he co-founded in 1967 and was banned in 1988 for National Socialist re-engagement, once said of Ofner: "Ofner is a man who [...] does not oppose our world view in anything, and who lives and represents what is in our party programme, not because he is a secret NDP member, but because he is a real German."
Profiling under Jörg Haider
In 1986 Jörg Haider took over the leadership of the FPÖ after a fight vote at the party conference in Innsbruck. The SPÖ under Chancellor Vranitzky then ended the coalition with the FPÖ.
Whereas the FPÖ had previously had its strongholds in the fraternity milieu, it now increasingly turned to a new clientele. Above all, the FPÖ was able to win new voters in the traditionally socialist working-class milieu. Many of the means and slogans that helped Haider to his success were subject to harsh criticism both inside and outside Austria. His preference for the instrument of the referendum, xenophobic and racist slogans, and above all statements about the Nazi regime earned him the reputation of a right-wing populist and demagogue. Haider's relativization of the National Socialist regime in 1991 is seen as a key point in an ideological shift towards right-wing extremism, in the course of which central positions in the party were filled by right-wing extremists to neo-Nazis. Haider benefited from the scandalisation of Kurt Waldheim's candidacy for Federal President by Austrian and international voices, which was perceived as illegitimate interference in Austria's internal affairs or as the pernicious influence of a "Jewish world conspiracy".
In 1993, the FPÖ's petition for a referendum on Austria led to a split in the party. Five MPs around Heide Schmidt broke away from the party after a dispute with Jörg Haider and founded the Liberal Forum. This development was preceded by a strengthening of the German nationalist to right-wing extremist parts of the party, which marginalized the liberal wing. The Liberal Forum was represented in the National Council until 1999. With the departure of the liberal wing, the FPÖ left the Liberal International in 1993, not least to avoid the threat of expulsion. From 1994 onwards, the FPÖ advocated a concept of state restructuring known as the Third Republic.
From 1998 onwards, the Rosenstingl affair involving Peter Rosenstingl, a member of the National Council and treasurer of the FPÖ parliamentary club, led to a corruption scandal. Rosenstingl had become involved in obscure and unprofitable investments, which he used his position to obtain loans from banks and later embezzled party funds to support. Within the FPÖ, indications of Rosenstingl's activities had been ignored for a long time. Heinrich Haltmeyer, then deputy party leader in Lower Austria, informed Haider and party general secretary Walter Meischberger of his misgivings about Rosenstingl and was removed from office shortly afterwards. A functionary working as a lawyer for a bank affirmed in an affidavit that he had already given a hint about Rosenstingl's malversations in 1997. The then leader of the Lower Austrian party, Gratzer, then removed the whistleblower from his functions. Haider himself had been informed of Rosenstingl's debts two months before he fled. After the affair became known, the party organs showed themselves to be ignorant, Haider let it be known that he was in Asia. After his alleged return, Haider stated that he had not known anything about the events and, among other things, arranged for Gratzer's resignation.
ascension to ruling party
Despite the secession of the LF, the FPÖ continued to experience an enormous upswing as an opposition party and became the second strongest party in the 1999 National Council elections with 26.9 %. In 2000 a coalition of ÖVP and FPÖ under the leadership of Federal Chancellor Wolfgang Schüssel (ÖVP) took over the government. With Susanne Riess-Passer, the FPÖ provided the vice chancellor.
The FPÖ's participation in government provoked fierce criticism, which culminated in the Thursday demonstrations in terms of domestic policy and in the so-called sanctions of the other 14 EU states against the Austrian federal government in terms of foreign policy.
The thin personnel cover of the FPÖ proves to be a problem. Numerous ministers such as Elisabeth Sickl, Michael Krüger or Michael Schmid had to be replaced after a short time. Due to irreconcilable conflicts between the more moderate wing of the government and the supporters of Jörg Haider, who held no government office, two members of the FPÖ government (Susanne Riess-Passer, Karl-Heinz Grasser) and club chairman Peter Westenthaler resigned in autumn 2002. This finally led to early elections. (See also Knittelfeld FPÖ Assembly 2002).
With the YLine affair, the FPÖ became entangled in an economic scandal in the course of 2002.
The coalition passed numerous reforms such as a pension reform, a liberalisation of the trade regulations or the extension of child benefits. In terms of economic policy, the ÖVP was in charge. The common agenda included forced privatisation, a dismantling of the social state and the weakening of the institutions of social partnership.
Political crash and cabinet Schüssel II
In the National Council elections in November 2002 the FPÖ only achieved a 10% share of the vote and 18 National Council mandates (1999: 52). As the third strongest party, it remained only slightly ahead of the Greens. The winner of this election was the coalition partner ÖVP, which was now able to unite 42.3 % of the votes. The FPÖ under the leadership of Herbert Haupt again entered into a coalition with the ÖVP, but had to make very large concessions in terms of both personnel and issues.
Especially in the course of the second legislative period, the FPÖ was often accused of deviating from its original goals under pressure from the ÖVP. Within the party, especially after disastrous election results (with the exception of the Carinthian state elections), there was a dispute about the party's direction. At the end of October 2003 Herbert Haupt had to resign as vice-chancellor and was replaced by Hubert Gorbach (Haupt, however, remained minister of social affairs and nominal party leader).
In the 2004 elections to the European Parliament, the FPÖ suffered the largest loss of votes in a nationwide election in the Second Republic. It plummeted from 23.4 % (1999) to only 6.3 %. This left the party with only one mandate holder, Andreas Mölzer, who had ousted the leading candidate Hans Kronberger in a preferential election campaign. A complaint filed with the Constitutional Court by Hans Kronberger, who wanted to take over the parliamentary seat in place of Andreas Mölzer, was unsuccessful for formal reasons (whether it would have been successful without formal violations is disputed, but is predominantly denied by constitutional lawyers). Mölzer is considered a representative of the German nationalist wing of the party. After the EU elections Herbert Haupt also had to step down as party leader. At a special party conference on 3 July 2004, Ursula Haubner was elected as the new leader of the FP with 79 percent. She thus received the lowest approval of any FP leader since her brother Jörg Haider ran against Norbert Steger in 1986.
As part of its participation in the Schüssel II cabinet, the FPÖ became embroiled in a series of economic scandals, including the BUWOG affair, the Tetron affair, the Eurofighter affair and the Telekom affair.
Split
On 4 April 2005, the former leadership of the FPÖ, including the former federal party leader Ursula Haubner, Vice-Chancellor Hubert Gorbach, parliamentary party leader Herbert Scheibner and Carinthian Governor Jörg Haider, announced their transfer to a newly founded party called Bündnis Zukunft Österreich (BZÖ). The future of the FPÖ thus seemed uncertain. The affairs of the FPÖ were managed on an interim basis by the Viennese club chairman Hilmar Kabas, who was the oldest member of the federal party executive.
On 23 April 2005 Heinz-Christian Strache was elected as the new party chairman. He received 90.1 percent of the votes at the party conference in Salzburg. The new chairman gained notoriety above all for his conspicuous election campaigns, which critics of the FPÖ classified as xenophobic, expressed in posters such as "Vienna must not become Istanbul" or "German instead of understanding nothing". In addition to Strache, Secretary General Herbert Kickl was also responsible for the most recent FPÖ election campaigns.
Most of the provincial associations remained in the FPÖ. Only Jörg Haider's Carinthian FPÖ became (almost) completely part of the BZÖ as Die Freiheitlichen in Kärnten. The FPÖ in Upper Austria under regional leader Steinkellner initially decided to remain independent as the Freedom Party of Upper Austria (FPOÖ), but after Steinkellner's resignation in September 2005 reintegration negotiations with the federal FPÖ were underway, which were successfully concluded in February 2006. The FPÖ in Vorarlberg had also declared its independence from both the FPÖ and the BZÖ, but also rejoined the federal FPÖ in spring 2006. In Salzburg, Lower Austria and Burgenland the entire FPÖ provincial leadership remained in the party. In Vienna and Styria the FPÖ provincial parliamentary clubs split shortly after the founding of the BZÖ. In Tyrol the two members of the provincial parliament had initially joined the BZÖ, but later founded a provincial parliamentary club of the Free Party that was equally independent of the FPÖ and the BZÖ.
In the Styrian state elections on 2 October 2005, the first elections since the party split, the FPÖ narrowly missed re-entering the state parliament. Styria was thus the only province in which neither the FPÖ nor the BZÖ were represented in parliament. The provincial elections in Burgenland on 9 October 2005 brought a halving of votes for the FPÖ, but it remained in the provincial parliament with 2 (previously 4) mandataries. The BZÖ did not run in Burgenland.
In the 2005 Vienna City Council elections on 23 October 2005, the FPÖ with top candidate Strache received 14.9 % of the votes (significantly more than expected in all election forecasts), while the BZÖ fell well short of entry into the provincial parliament with 1.2 % of the votes.
From 6 to 13 March 2006 - i.e. during the Austrian EU Presidency - a referendum initiated by the FPÖ on EU issues took place under the title Österreich bleib frei! It was predominantly characterised by the media as an "anti-EU referendum". The target of 100,001 votes was set comparatively low (if more than 100,000 votes are cast, the referendum must be dealt with in the National Council). With 258,277 supporters or 4.28% of those entitled to register, this target was exceeded, but the petition came in 21st out of the 32 petitions so far, i.e. in about the same strength as earlier petitions initiated by the FPÖ, such as in 1987: anti-privilege petition against the level of politicians' salaries - 250,697 / 4.57%.697 / 4.57 %, 1997: Schilling referendum against the introduction of the Euro - 253,949 / 4.43 %, 1997: Atomfreies Österreich - 248,787 / 4.34 %, but e.g. clearly ahead of the referendum initiated in 1989 to secure freedom of broadcasting in Austria, which achieved only 109,197 / 1.95 %. Of the previous FPÖ-initiated referendums, only Austria First (1993: against EU accession, also apostrophised as an "anti-foreigner referendum") was significantly more successful with 416,531 / 7.35 %.
As of 9 March 2006, the FPÖ was represented in the National Council by only two MPs: Barbara Rosenkranz and Reinhard Eugen Bösch. Helene Partik-Pablé, Max Hofmann and Detlev Neudeck left the party due to disputes regarding the funding of the Freedom Academy (FPÖ educational workshop). By decision of the federal government, the FPÖ was not to receive the legally stipulated subsidies for the Freedom Academy, as in its view the stipulated limit of five members of parliament belonging to the National Council had no longer been reached. However, it was disputed whether this provision referred to the size of a parliamentary group at the time of the constitution of the National Council or had to be re-examined annually.
Re-emergence in opposition
In the 2006 National Council elections on 1 October, the FPÖ under Strache's leadership achieved a share of 11% of the vote, corresponding to 21 MPs. The BZÖ under the leadership of Peter Westenthaler achieved a share of the vote of 4.1 % or 7 mandates.
In the early National Council elections in 2008, the FPÖ was able to increase its share of the vote to 17.5%.
On 16 December 2009 Uwe Scheuch and Heinz-Christian Strache announced in Vienna that the majority of the leadership of the Carinthian regional group would leave the BZÖ and in future exist as an independent party under the name "Die Freiheitlichen in Kärnten (FPK)" (The Freedom Party in Carinthia) in cooperation with the FPÖ, as they could no longer support the neoliberal course of BZÖ chairman Josef Bucher. This cooperation was announced by Strache, Scheuch and the new managing Carinthian FPÖ regional party chairman Christian Leyroutz on 22 June 2010, after the previous day the previous chairman of the Carinthian regional FPÖ Harald Jannach had resigned as FPÖ regional party chairman, as he saw this cooperation as "the end of the independence of the FPÖ Carinthia". The aim of this cooperation was to reunite the "liberal camp" and to work together at all levels, with the FPK retaining its independence at state and municipal level.
In the 2010 Vienna state and municipal elections, the FPÖ received 25.77% of the votes cast, making it the second strongest party. The top candidate was again Heinz-Christian Strache.
Following the example of other far-right parties, the FPÖ began to position itself as an anti-Islamic party. In the election campaigns of recent years, criticism of Islam and warnings against the "Islamisation" of Austria (according to its own statements, the fight against "Islamic extremism"), which it feared, were an important issue. After the attacks in Oslo and on Utøya in 2011, the FPÖ came under media pressure, as some of its members such as Elisabeth Sabaditsch-Wolff, Susanne Winter and Werner Königshofer published Islamophobic texts on the Internet or belonged to right-wing extremist Facebook groups. After the National Council member Königshofer compared Breivik's terrorist attack to the abortion of children on his page, he was expelled from the party.
In the 2013 Carinthian state elections, the FPK lost 28.74 percentage points, the largest loss of votes by a party in the history of the Second Republic. The election result led to a power struggle between the FPÖ and the FPK. The federal FPÖ demanded that the FPK deputies Dörfler, Dobernig and Anton renounce their mandates in the state parliament. The three MPs refused, resulting in a split in the FPK, which subsequently briefly lost its club status in the state parliament. On 28 June 2013, the FPK united with the FPÖ.
Andreas Mölzer, the FPÖ's top candidate for the 2014 European elections alongside Harald Vilimsky, compared the European Union to the Third Reich during a panel discussion and also spoke of a "Negro conglomerate" in this context. Due to these and other statements, Mölzer finally resigned as top candidate on 8 April, and Vilimsky became the sole top candidate. The FPÖ achieved 19.7 percent (+7.0) of the vote in the election on 25 May 2014, doubling its number of mandates to four.
In the regional elections in Styria on 31 May 2015, the FPÖ more than doubled its share of the vote, almost catching up with the SPÖ and ÖVP. On the same day, the regional election in Burgenland was held, in which the FPÖ achieved 15 per cent. After the election, the SPÖ and the FPÖ agreed to form a red-blue coalition under Governor Hans Niessl, which was very controversial within the SPÖ. His deputy was the chairman of the Burgenland FPÖ, Johann Tschürtz. Within the provincial government, the FPÖ provides two of a total of seven provincial councillors.
In June 2015, a party split occurred in Salzburg following a conflict between Strache and Karl Schnell. The split led by Schnell, which initially appeared under the name Die Freiheitlichen in Salzburg, was joined by four of the five FPÖ deputies in the Salzburg state parliament, as well as two National Council deputies and one Bundesrat member.
In the 2015 state elections in Upper Austria, the FPÖ doubled its share of the vote and achieved over 30 percent. After the election, the Austrian People's Party (ÖVP) and the Freedom Party (FPÖ) agreed on a working agreement within the framework of the Upper Austrian state government, which is staffed according to the proportional representation system, and FPÖ state party leader Manfred Haimbuchner became deputy state governor. The Freedom Party achieved a similarly high result as in Upper Austria two weeks later in the state parliament and municipal council elections in Vienna, with 34 of a total of 100 deputies the FPÖ is entitled to provide one of the two deputy mayors, this post was taken by Johann Gudenus.
In the 2016 federal presidential election in Austria, 35 per cent of the votes in the first round went to the FPÖ candidate Norbert Hofer. The FPÖ thus achieved first place, or a relative majority, in a nationwide election for the first time. In the runoff, however, Norbert Hofer was defeated by Green Party-backed candidate Alexander Van der Bellen, who received 50.3 percent, with 49.7 percent. However, the run-off election was annulled by the Constitutional Court following a challenge brought by the FPÖ on the grounds of violations of the law in the counting of postal votes and possible voter influence through partial results published prematurely, and was repeated on 4 December 2016. Hofer was also defeated by his opponent Van der Bellen in this repeat election, but the defeat was more pronounced than in the run-off election in May. Since no new Federal President could be sworn in after Heinz Fischer's term of office ended, the college of three National Council Presidents, to which the Free Democratic candidate Norbert Hofer belonged, carried out his official duties on an interim basis until Van der Bellen was sworn in on 26 January 2017.
Election 2017 and renewed government participation
In the early National Council election of 2017, the FPÖ achieved the second-best result in the party's history with 26.0% and 51 mandates, but remained in third place behind the strengthened ÖVP under Sebastian Kurz and the stagnating SPÖ under Christian Kern. A government participation of the Freedom Party was already considered likely in the run-up to the election.
Shortly after the election, the Austrian People's Party (ÖVP) entered into coalition negotiations with the Freedom Party (FPÖ), and on 18 December 2017 the Federal Government Kurz I was appointed and sworn in by the Federal President. The FPÖ received six of fourteen ministries, including Interior, Foreign Affairs and National Defence. Heinz-Christian Strache became Vice-Chancellor.
In the following four state elections in spring 2018, the FPÖ was able to gain votes across the board. In Lower Austria, the FPÖ succeeded in returning to the proportional representation system in the state government, with Gottfried Waldhäusl becoming state councillor. The election campaign had previously been overshadowed by the affair surrounding the songbook of the Germania in Wiener Neustadt around top candidate Udo Landbauer. In Salzburg the gains were comparatively low, probably also due to the entry of the Free Party of Salzburg, which with 4.5 % narrowly failed to enter the Landtag.
Ibiza affair 2019 and its consequences
→ Main article: Ibiza affair
Following the publication of a video showing Heinz-Christian Strache and Johann Gudenus in the summer of 2017 negotiating the questionable awarding of state contracts and circumventing the party financing law, as well as being prepared to engage in corruption, they resigned from their government and party positions. As a result, Chancellor Sebastian Kurz declared the coalition with the FPÖ to be over and announced new elections. After the FPÖ lost almost ten percentage points in the National Council election at the end of September 2019, with a vote share of 16.17 percent, and accusations against Strache for payments he had received from the party (10,000 euros per month as well as 2,500 euros in rent subsidies per month) and for suspected false accounting of expenses, Strache ended his political career on 1 October and suspended his party membership - which is not possible according to the party statutes. In a meeting of the party executive, Strache was suspended on the same day. After further controversial statements by Strache on Facebook and at public appearances within the party, he was expelled from the party on 13 December 2019.
On December 12, 2019, the three members of the Vienna City Council and State Parliament Karl Baron, Dietrich Kops and Klaus Handler resigned from the FPÖ and founded the party The Alliance for Austria (DAÖ) and its own state parliamentary club.
In January 2020, the retirement of Harald Vilimsky and Christian Hafenecker as general secretaries of the FPÖ was announced, and Michael Schnedlitz was elected as his successor on 30 January 2020.
Following the resignation of Norbert Hofer, Herbert Kickl was elected Federal Party Chairman with 88.24 percent of the votes at an extraordinary party conference on 19 June 2021. Udo Landbauer became the new deputy.
