The winner of the election on 15 October must be Austria!
In his latest article, Paneuropa President Karl von Habsburg calls for several necessary reforms for Austria. When we speak of freedom, personal responsibility, family, and subsidiarity, this is a demand for a significant reduction in taxes, a noticeable lowering of the state expenditure ratio, and an appeal for massive deregulation and debureaucratisation.
After the 2013 National Council election, commentators were in agreement: that was the last time the permanent Austrian government of the SPÖ and ÖVP would secure a majority. If the polls are to be believed, that assessment was wrong; a new edition of the coalition between the ÖVP under Sebastian Kurz and the SPÖ – then likely with Hans Peter Doskozil as Vice-Chancellor – is at least mathematically possible. Whether such a government variant could still be feasible after the SPÖ’s mud-slinging campaign is, however, doubtful.
But whoever forms the government for the next five years, and with whatever majorities, they will be confronted with a whole series of challenges. To overcome these challenges, one thing will be necessary: not the interests of the party, but Austria, its place in Central Europe, and the development of the European Union must take centre stage.
It is no longer a question of left or right, nation-state versus European Union. It is about the contrast between personal freedom and individual responsibility, the rule of law, a free economy, private initiative and personal liability, family autonomy, subsidiarity, and religious freedom – the actual European values – on one side, and paternalism, statism, and a planned economy on the other. The nation-states in the EU today are as centralist and planned-economy-oriented as their supporters accuse the European Union of being. Both left-wing and right-wing parties want a paternalistic state, some on the European or international level, others on the national level.
It cannot be about elevating the concept of the nation-state to the European level; rather, we must succeed in overcoming the nation-state in the spirit of the ‘Reichsidee’ to create a politically capable European Union that is able to act on the global stage. Foreign and security policy is just as much a European competence as the securing of external borders. The sealing off of internal borders is a relapse into the small-mindedness of the interwar period. Here, one can learn from the concept of Central Europe, both in Austria and at the EU level.
Austria could play a pioneering role in cooperation with its historically linked neighbours. When we speak of freedom, personal responsibility, family, and subsidiarity, this is a demand for a significant reduction in taxes, a noticeable lowering of the state expenditure ratio, and an appeal for massive deregulation and debureaucratisation. That would truly do the country and the Austrians good.
The article originally appeared on the website of Karl von Habsburg. Every Friday, he publishes a current commentary there.
