There was outrage in the European Union when Jorg Haider's Freedom Party entered the Governmnet of Austria. But diplomatic sanctions imposed as a result have now had to be lifted. The vice-president of Catholic Action finds that though Haider has gained, the Austrian people as a whole are among the losers. A photograph which went the rounds in Austria in mid-September spoke for itself. It showed the Chancellor, Wolfgang Sch?ssel, and some of his colleagues from the People?s Party kneeling shoulder to shoulder before the tiny twelfth-century statue of the Virgin Mary in the church at Mariazell in the Styrian mountains. What was the aim of this pilgrimage to the famous Magna Mater Austriae, as the Mariazell church is known? To give thanks for the lifting of the European Union sanctions against Austria, according to the official announcement. The ministers at prayer were lampooned in the Austrian press, and it was indeed painfully obvious that these members of the cabinet were taking part in a pious charade.

Nevertheless, the performance was cleverly staged, with a particularly sensitive feel for Austrian history. Whether in thanksgiving for the end of the Black Death at the beginning of the modern era, or for the successful repulsion of the Turkish armies from the gates of Vienna in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, pilgrimages have constantly been used by Austrian rulers as a popular political tool. The present Austrian Government had inflated the dispute over sanctions till it took on the proportions of a threat to the nation. Hence when the 14 other members of the European Union decided to lift these measures against Austria, the event could be portrayed as a liberation, and, more important still, a victory for Wolfgang Sch?ssel?s Government. A pilgrimage to Austria?s national shrine thus made sense.

It was at the beginning of February this year that the 14 other European Union governments froze bilateral contacts with the Austrian Government in protest against its formation of a cabinet in which half the ministers belonged to the Freedom Party, then led by Jorg Haider and considered to be on the far Right politically. Haider himself did not join the Government, but remained in charge of Carinthia, Austria?s southernmost province. The sanctions imposed on Austria, excluding it from the inner councils of the European Union, led to the country?s diplomatic isolation.

But the cabinet, consisting of ministers from the People?s Party and the Freedom Party, had not done anything which could be considered a breach of human rights or European values. The measures taken by Austria?s partners in the European Union were thus based purely on suspicion, because there were no legal procedures in existence which could have been followed. By the same token, Austria could not take legal steps to protect itself, as no provisions for a defence existed. The political structures of the European Union were not involved, as it was not legally possible to exclude Austria from the European Union?s decision-making.

Now, it is beyond dispute that the Austrian Government was elected democratically. At the general election in October 1999, the Social Democrats won a third of the votes and the People?s Party and the Freedom Party 27 per cent each. Most Austrians appear to have been against a coalition between the People?s Party and the Freedom Party such as was actually formed, but that cannot deny the legitimacy of what was done.

So what did the European Union hope to gain from the sanctions? Were they meant to bring down a democratically elected Government by means of a procedure not covered by law? Or were they meant to serve as a warning that the Freedom Party could not ignore? Or was the aim to ensure that democratic and human rights would be upheld in Austria?

The most serious consequence of the sanctions was that Austrian ministers, particularly if they belonged to the Freedom Party, had almost no place in the informal bilateral consultations which take place before important European Union decisions are made. Instead, Austrian politics became dominated by emotion. Something similar had happened previously, in the turbulent years of Kurt Waldheim?s presidency, from 1986 to 1992, when the espousal of National Socialism by Austria in the Nazi era became the subject of worldwide discussion. Many of the actors in this latest Austrian drama performed again on this emotional stage, and the joint People?s Party ? Freedom Party Government put on a particularly brilliant performance.

The formation of the new Government in February this year was greeted outside Austria with hysterical media outrage. Many Austrians, even if the new Government was not to their liking, could not understand why the reporting in so much of the foreign media was quite so one-sided. At the end of February, the former Swedish prime minister and UN commissioner for the Balkans, Carl Bildt, sarcastically commented on these exaggerated reactions. As yet, he said, there are no recognisable signs of concentration camps on the outskirts of Vienna. Many Austrians were angered at the unjust way they thought their country was being treated.

On the other hand, the attitude of Austrians to the adverse reaction of others was not exactly perceptive. They pitied themselves as the world?s outcasts, and the Austrian media promoted this image. Here, too, there are parallels with the Waldheim years, when the country was in diplomatic quarantine. Then, as now, Israel withdrew its ambassador from Vienna. What, above all, many Austrians do not understand is why the European Union reacted so sensitively to the rise of the Freedom Party. Austrians still do not really appreciate why remarks by their politicians that appear to make light of the Nazi era are regarded elsewhere as intolerable. This became obvious yet again recently when the newly elected leader of the Freedom Party in the province of Lower Austria, Ernest Windholz, used the slogan Our Honour Lies in our Loyalty, which was an SS watchword. His words were greeted with a storm of indignation by the media and intellectuals but Windholz, born 14 years after the end of the Second World War, insisted that he had no idea where the expression came from. He is still in office.

Despite such abhorrent incidents, there have been no violent xenophobic excesses in Austria as there were, for instance, in Spain a few months ago, nor has there been any right-wing terrorism against foreigners, as there was in Germany this summer. As far as Nazi activities are concerned, the laws and the administration of justice in Austria are very strict and are firmly applied.

Before the new Government was formed, President Thomas Klestil demanded that both party leaders, Wolfgang Sch?ssel and Jorg Haider, should sign a declaration declaring their support of European values, of the rule of law and of human rights. This request was without doubt a consequence of outside pressure and it was this pressure which polarised Austria. At the end of February, a quarter of a million people took to the streets to protest against the new Government, and every Thursday since then there has been a demonstration against the composition of the cabinet.

In the midst of these controversies, Haider declared that he was relinquishing leadership of the Freedom Party. Sudden and unexpected moves are as characteristic of him as his populism. In June, Susanne Riess-Passer succeeded him as leader of the Freedom Party, but very few people believe that Haider has really stepped down. He remains governor of Carinthia and is still a member of the so-called coalition-committee, in which People?s Party and Freedom Party leaders decide the basic lines of government policy. In the spring of this year, the Austrian Government made use of the European sanctions for political stage management. A number of sharp cuts in the social security system were due. The Government succeeded in drawing people?s attention away from its austerity policies by focusing attention on the hostile European Union. Simultaneously, Austrian representatives at meetings of the Council of Ministers of the European Union succeeded in making a nuisance of themselves by continually pressing for the sanctions to be ended.

The move to escape from the sanctions began in the same way as the original move to impose them: in a legal vacuum. The European Union commissioned three wise men ? the former President of Finland, Martti Ahtisaari, the German human rights expert, Jochen Frowein, and the former Spanish Foreign Minister, Marcelino Oreja ? to draw up a report covering the Austrian Government?s commitment to common European values and the evolution of the political character of the Freedom Party. Beginning their work early in July, the three met the most important Austrian politicians and representatives of civil society and the Churches in Vienna and later in Heidelberg, and on 8 September they delivered their report to the French President, Jacques Chirac, who at present presides over the Council of Ministers.

The report gives Austria good marks on human rights and also finds little fault with the Government. It warns, however, that the description of the Freedom Party as a right-wing populist party with radical elements is still correct, and it agrees with accusations against the party that have been made for a number of years now, that it is guilty of fanning xenophobic feelings in its election campaigns.

The sharpest criticism, however, concerns the party?s attempts to silence political opponents by suing them for libel. In recent months Haider and other Freedom Party politicians have inundated the courts with a veritable flood of legal proceedings against critical journalists and intellectuals. The fact that Haider?s lawyer, Dieter B?hmdorfer, who has been responsible for bringing in all these lawsuits, has since March been Minister of Justice, is seen as particularly bizarre. B?hmdorfer is the only government minister criticised by name in the report. The three wise men do, however, concede that the Freedom Party could change, and recommend that the sanctions against Austria should be lifted, as has since been done.

An ? albeit provisional ? analysis of what took place shows that Wolfgang Sch?ssel?s Government is the winner. It succeeded in vociferously stirring up an emotional reaction against the European Union, until the sanctions ? which were hardly felt in Austria ? were lifted. The Freedom Party, too, is among the winners, as the attempt to marginalise it and make it politically and morally unacceptable in Austria failed. Many Austrians had already found that the Freedom Party is never weakened by such controversies, and that has now been the European Union?s experience too.

THE European Union must be regarded as the political loser. It introduced measures against Austria without a clear reason or aim. The whole undertaking was politically dilettantish and has, in Austria at least, cost the European Union a lot of support. In Austria itself, Wolfgang Sch?ssel is firmly in the saddle, whereas at the beginning of the year no one in Austria would have staked a penny on his political future. But the Austrian people themselves are among the losers. During the years of Waldheim?s presidency, Austria?s Nazi past was at last, slowly and painfully, re-examined. But now the country is once again regarded with doubt by the international community. In her recently published memoirs, Ruth Steiner, former general secretary of Catholic Action in Austria, who in the Waldheim years was very much involved in the reappraisal of Austria?s recent history, and who has participated in protests by Christians against Freedom Party policies, concludes: In the year 2000, Austria is now back where it was in 1986 when the Waldheim era began.

Throughout, the Catholic Church in Austria has kept a low profile. This is first of all because many Catholics belong to the People?s Party, which explains why they tend to support, or are at least reluctant to criticise, the present Government. Secondly, Austrian Catholics have had to contend with serious internal controversies in recent years, and have tended to concentrate on church reform and neglect social and political issues. An ecumenical letter on social questions in which all Churches in Austria are participating has been postponed until later in the autumn, although a stand is urgently needed as the Government has already begun to make drastic cuts in welfare expenditure. Now that the sanctions have been lifted, the Government can no longer cleverly use them to overshadow all political and social discussion. In this regard, Austria can expect a hot autumn.

Leading the pilgrimage to Mariazell, Cardinal Christoph Sch?nborn, Archbishop of Vienna, took up the cudgels for the European Union to be enlarged towards the East. This is one of the few causes on which the Catholic Church in Austria is more or less united, though even here much persuasion is still necessary. But the Freedom Party is busy opposing enlargement wherever it can, and now feels it is getting the upper hand.

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