Austrian legislative election, 1999

In Austria, the legislative election of October 3, 1999 (elections for the National Council of Austria) caused a major upheaval in the political landscape.

From 1971 to 1983, the Social Democratic Party of Austria (SPÖ) had ruled the country alone, receiving an absolute majority of both votes and seats in the national elections of 1971, 1975, 1979 under the leadership of Bruno Kreisky.

From 1983 to 1986, the SPÖ, under the leadership of Fred Sinowatz, headed a coalition government with the Freedom Party of Austria (FPÖ), which was then led by Norbert Steger, a liberal; this coalition broke when the right-wing politician Jörg Haider became the leader of the FPÖ.

From 1986 to 1999 the government was formed by a coalition between SPÖ and its junior partner ÖVP (Austrian People's Party). During that time the share of Haider's FPÖ grew from 5% to 27%.

In the 1999 election campaign, Wolfgang Schüssel, leader of the ÖVP since 1995, announced that his party would not be part of next government if it should fall behind its current second place. His promise did (as he had planned) mobilize his voters, but not enough -- by the slimmest of margins, Schüssel's ÖVP had to yield the second position to Haider's FPÖ (see table below).

The Liberal Forum lost all its 10 seats in the National Council, where they had been represented since 1993, and has subsequently become a microparty.

Austrian federal president Thomas Klestil, in accordance with tradition and also with his own preferences, asked acting chancellor Viktor Klima, head of the SPÖ, which had remained the strongest party, to form a government that would have a majority in parliament; as an SPÖ-FPÖ coalition was unrealistic (because of the SPÖ's disdain for Haider's personality and politics), this would have meant a renewal of the SPÖ-ÖVP coalition. Negotiations dragged on for months and eventually broke down in late January 2000.

Whether this outcome had been planned all along by the ÖVP, and whether the ÖVP had at the same time secretly been negotiating with the FPÖ, is a matter of dispute. In any case, official negotiations between ÖVP and FPÖ quickly led to agreements about the policies and personalities that should be represented in an ÖVP-FPÖ coalition.

A stone-faced president Klestil swore in the new government under chancellor Schüssel on February 4, 2000.

Protests and "Sanctions"

The government headed by Schüssel was - in its beginnings - probably the most controversial since 1945, both inside and outside of Austria.

Between 2000 and 2002 there were weekly Donnerstagsdemonstrationen (Thursday Demonstrations) through the city and the inner districts of Vienna. The heads the governments of the other 14 EU members decided to cease cooperation with the Austrian government, as it was felt in many countries that the cordon sanitaire against coalitions with parties considered as right-wing extremists, which had mostly held in Western Europe since 1945, had been breached. For example, for several months, other national leaders refused to shake hands and socialize with members of the Schüssel government. In Austria, this approach was often described as sanctions, for which supporters of the government often blamed the opposition social democrats and President Thomas Klestil, whose loyalty to the country was thus put into question. The EU leaders soon saw that their measures were counterproductive and returned to normality during the summer of 2000, even though the coalition remained unchanged. Nevertheless it is not easy to measure effects of the "sanctions". Short-term effects seemed to be counterproductive, but it is still possible that "sanctions" later helped to decrease the popularity of Freedom Party and also to prevent such coalitions in other EU countries.