'Neutrality' to 'Solidarity', or: How Austria Became a EU Member in 1994/95

It happened because the federal gov't lied to Moscow in 1988, re-wrote its initial application in 1989, and joined the EU by lying once more to the people ever since

Editorial prelim: this is a quite long, two-part posting that originally appeared on TKP.at (part 1, part 2). Today, I’ll cover part 1 on Austria’s EEC/EU accession, with part 2 coming to you tomorrow covering developments since.

Note that these are long postings, and that it is advisable to read them in the app or online.

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Long-time readers know that I’ve written about Austria and its ‘neutrality’ repeatedly:

Covidistan Annals XXV: Foreign Policy Blunders, or: the Lessons of Fake History, and will Austria now join NATO?

'Austria—it's time to join NATO', Politico Opines, Arguing that 'its Euro-Atlantic integration remains only half complete'

No Time for Neutrality: after Finland and Sweden abrogate their stance, Austria follows in all but name

Now it’s time to bring these ties together and, courtesy of Austria’s former partners-in-neutrality—Finland and Sweden—teaming up with the US/NATO—whose governments went ‘all-in’ in recent months.

Henrik Wallin

is all over Sweden’s NATO woes, but don’t be fooled by the Swedish-Turkish charade about the former’s NATO accession, for on 6 Dec. 2023 Stockholm reportedly entered into an agreement with the US and permits American use of 17 bases.

Without much further ado, here we go, then. Sigh.

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Austrian Lies about its Neutrality after 1989

In view of the current situation, the extremely low levels of the current discussions about Austria's ‘perpetual neutrality’ are telling. There is always talk of ‘solidarity’, typically accompanied by more or less meaningless chatter from ‘experts™’ and journalists in legacy media, with facts and their implications usually falling by the wayside. Any deliberation of the topics of ‘EU’, ‘solidarity’, and ‘neutrality’ soon leads into the thicket of legislative, executive, and international interests—and to the question of how to describe the actions of the Viennese governments since joining the EU.

A vexing issue is the ‘perpetual neutrality’ of the Republic of Austria, as this represents a commitment that was made involuntarily in 1955, but over time, neutrality became an integral part of Austrian identity.

In retrospect, it is easy to accuse the negotiators of the State Treaty (signed in 1955) of many shenanigans, but what is undisputed is that the State Treaty would hardly have been granted in this form without the federal government's corresponding promise—to Moscow—of Austria’s ‘perpetual neutrality’ in exchange for the withdrawal of Allied and Soviet troops.

What also seems particularly ‘piquant’ is that the ‘Constitutional Amendment of 26 Oct. 1955 instituting Austria's 'perpetual neutrality‘ is not only part of the constitution; since 1965, that day, 26 Oct., is also Austria’s ‘National Holiday’ (Nationalfeiertag):

After the last Allied troops withdrew, the National Council decided on Austria's permanent neutrality in a constitutional law issued on 26 Oct. 1955. This event was commemorated thereafter as ‘Flag Day’ (Tag der Fahne), which was renamed ‘National Day’ (Nationalfeiertag) in 1965.

EU Accession as ‘Trojan Horse’ (1994)

Some may ‘still’ remember that the EU accession campaign occurred in the mid-1990s: both the ‘conservative’ ÖVP and ‘social-democratic’ SPÖ were absolutely in favour, with the Greens, the FPÖ, and the KPÖ opposing this decision. Here you can find an exemplary overview of the posters from the referendum. Around two thirds of Austrians voted in favour of EU accession . The rest, as the saying goes, is history.

But what is also part of this story is the repeatedly emphasised notion that Austrian EU accession occurred ‘while maintaining neutrality’. As an example, I will cite a passage from Austria's application for (then) EEC membership:

In submitting this application, Austria assumes that it will maintain its internationally recognised status of perpetual neutrality, which is based on the [Constitutional Act] of 26 Oct. 1955 and that, as a member of the European Communities, it will also be in a position, based on the Accession Treaty, to fulfil the legal obligations arising from its status as a perpetually neutral state and to continue its policy of neutrality as a specific contribution to maintaining peace and security in Europe.

Source: Federal Ministry of Foreign Affairs (ed.), Außenpolitischer Bericht 1989, p. 187 (here and in the following my translations and emphases).

Here follows a statement by then-Chancellor Franz Vranitzky (in office 1986-1996), which appeared in the Vienna daily Kurier on 21 March2019 on the occasion of the 25th anniversary of Austria’s accession to the EU:

I started preparing for accession within the government in 1987. As is often the case in life, many things are possible as long as they are not written down. When the letter was written and sent to Brussels in 1989, suddenly there arose reservations. Some saw neutrality in danger, others feared joining Germany or NATO…

Because of the State Treaty, we had to talk to all four Allies…After three or four visits to Paris, I was able to put these concerns to rest. The issue was not particularly important to Mrs Thatcher in London. The US was very happy with it. The biggest roadblock was Moscow. So in 1988 I traveled to Prime Minister Ryzhkov, who was my direct counterpart as head of government. He said in the first quarter of an hour of our conversation: he read somewhere that we want to join the EU [sic]. Of course that doesn't work for the Soviet Union. I asked back why that shouldn't work. He then said that it would affect the neutrality enshrined in the State Treaty. I was then able to score points by pointing out that neutrality is not in the State Treaty at all, but that it was promulgated in its own law…

It took me three days in Moscow to assure my counterparts in repeated conversations: we have no sinister intentions, but believe that this is good for our economy and that we belong to a free Europe. In the end, Ryzhkov calmed down. When I left, he gave an interview to the Russian news agency TASS: the Austrian Chancellor had assured him that he would comply with all international obligations. That was it for us.

So much should be stated here as background information, because now we turn to more current events.

‘Solidarity’ Beats ‘Neutrality’

In a recently published op-ed (Der Standard, 16 Dec. 2023), one Ralph Janik postulated a quite adventurous version of neutrality. The proximate reason was a vote on an immediate ceasefire in the Middle East, called for by the UN General Assembly but rejected by Austria along with a few other states out of ‘solidarity with Israel’. Whatever the reason, Mr. Janik also mentions the larger context in a short paragraph that, as a historian, I would classify somewhere between ‘distortion of history’ and ‘disinformation’:

You can see it once again, Austria was and is not ‘neutral in its convictions’ [orig. gesinnungsneutral]. In the Middle East conflict, however, the reversal of our previous ‘neutrality policy’ is noticeable. While Bruno Kreisky diplomatically upgraded the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) in 1980 and thereby attracted Israel's anger, today the government is taking a directly opposite course. ‘No neutrality when it comes to terrorism’ is the motto, combined with very far-reaching, even unrestricted (?) solidarity. There are no longer any illusions about a role as a possible—impartial—mediator.

We briefly state ‘for the record’ that Austria’s ‘perpetual neutrality’ is part of the republic’s constitutional law, hence it is completely unclear what is meant by the ‘neutrality of convictions’.

If you follow Mr. Janik's argument, though, the State Treaty, the Neutrality Act, and countless statements, laws, and regulations in this regard are all based on—a lie.

What does this do to the Republic of Austria? Are all Austrians liars if the governments all lie ‘in our name’?

It is obvious that Mr. Janik expresses his opinion here, but he apparently does so in the manner of an angry toddler, devoid of any connection to reality.

What is ‘Solidarity’?

Such nonsense turns out to be a particularly impressive lie in the face of the facts ‘back then’, about which Manfred Schaich informs us in his essay ‘Waypoints on Austria's Path to EU Accession: The Resolution of the Neutrality Problem’, which was published on the tenth anniversary of Austria's accession to the EU:

As ‘starting point’, 1986/87 is mentioned, i.e., the beginning of the Austrian application for membership. Note that this is 2-3 years earlier than the date (1989) cited by former chancellor Vranitzky.

‘Europe was still divided back then’, Schaich begins his essay, ‘and generations of Austrian officials, diplomats and politicians, indeed the entire politically interested public, had been under the impression for decades that our perpetual neutrality was linked to membership in an at least partially supranational organisation ‘is almost by definition incompatible’.

(There goes the ‘idea’ by Mr. Janik about the ‘neutrality of conviction’, by the way.)

There were of course other obstacles (especially the question of Alpine transit), but the negotiations for EC/EU accession soon stalled—due to Austria's neutrality: ‘The EC were currently developing the project of a Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP) with future military and defence policy components. Moscow considered this a clear incompatibility of our neutrality and EC membership.’

This is the context of Vranitzky's above-mentioned trip to Moscow in 1989, with Schaich stating that the positive presentation of the talks (‘Green Light’) was ultimately ‘probably not right, but it was important on the internal front, not least because because there were no “contradictory tones” from Moscow regarding Austria’s accession to the EEC/EU.’

After a long struggle, a first application for membership was sent to Brussels in 1988, but there was little success there due to the reference to neutrality (there goes Mr. Vranitzky’s recollection) and the omission of the ‘commitment to the idea of ​​integration’ in that first application (which ÖVP Foreign Minister Mock was ‘not happy about’) met with resistance in Brussels:

Brussels’ reactions to the application for membership presented by Foreign Minister Mock to French Foreign Minister Dumas on 17 July 1989 confirmed the concern…

[Commission President Jacques] Delors' comment serves as an example: He said that Austria should not only keep an eye on the economic but also the political goals and adopt them; political agreement also implies a common defense . Belgian Foreign Minister Eyskens said that if Austria insisted on its inviolable neutrality there would be problems .

So we learn two things from Mr Schaich's essay: first, neutrality was a major obstacle to possible EC/EU accession; and, second, that this continued to be the case after Vranitzky's aforementioned trip to Moscow.

Despite Vranitzky's reminder that Mikhail Gorbachev ‘didn't mention the neutrality reservations at all during our hour-long conversation’, according to Schaich's report, ‘an official Soviet diplomatic protest note arrived in August [1989], in which Moscow reiterated its incompatibility arguments’.

Given these facts, what followed is illuminating.

From ‘Neutrality’ to ‘Solidarity’

In the wake of the Wende in the autumn and winter of 1989/90, Martin Schaich worked ‘on behalf of Alois Mock’ ​​on a no less significant turnaround: a ‘memorandum to all EC states’ was drawn up ‘right at the beginning of 1990’ whose text was considered ‘the “second Austrian application for accession”’ by Brussels.

Schaich explains the meaning of this memo as follows::

The content and, above all, the tenor were actually new. We formulated a suggestive commitment to the European unification process and the goals of the EC Treaties, in whose realisation we wanted to ‘participate in solidarity’. The dynamic concept of solidarity, that is, one that extends into the future, led us to the solution to the question of neutrality in the coming accession negotiations .

In other words: since 1990, when Austrians invoke or show ‘solidarity’, they mean something other than what people—of the Austrian Constitution—understand as ‘neutrality’.

Foreign Minister Mock used a so-called ‘speaking note’ in all his discussions with EC representatives, which contained the following further statements:

• ‘Europe’s security is Austria’s security’;

• ‘Austria is automatically and naturally part of the European Security Arrangement.’

• ‘Austria has no reservations about cooperation in security policy.’

Regarding neutrality, it was noted that Austria assumed that the obligations outlined in the Neutrality Act (1955)—i.e., not to allow foreign military bases on Austrian territory and not to belong to any military alliance—would be observed by the EC.

With the above statement, at the beginning of 1990 we were already on the way to—as it would later be called—the reduction of neutrality to its ‘military core’ and had thus also mapped out the solution found in 1993/1994.

‘Supplemented by the oral interpretations of this “speaking note”’, Schaich continues, Vranitzky and Mock achieved their goal, ‘namely the reduction of doubts and reservations on the EC side’ with respect to Austria’s accession to the EU.

But that wasn't enough, in June 1992 Austria followed up: ‘It was now said that Austria fully identified with the goals of the CFSP and would participate actively and in solidarity in its “dynamic further development”’.

However, Austria had still not reached ‘the end of the road’, as there were still “doubts and reservations on the part of the EC about ‘the further development of the CFSP’ and the ‘possible consequences of the membership of a neutral state’.

On the part of Austria, however, Schaich continued, in this second memorandum ‘it was no longer necessary to refer again to neutrality and its consideration’ since ‘everything had already been said about it earlier’.

Thanks to British-German intervention, in the final rounds of negotiations in autumn of 1993, it was finally possible to avoid asking all three then neutral states—Finland, Sweden, Austria—a ‘politically unpleasant’ laundry list of hypothetical questions.

But that's not all, there was another constitutional hurdle:

The EC required Austria to make a formal declaration, which would have effectively resulted in submission to unforeseeable obligations that did not yet exist.

This was finally averted by a ‘Joint Declaration’ by Finland, Sweden, and Austria, which contained an affirmation of European solidarity, but was made ‘without commitment to potential future obligations’.

Schaich's summary was:

At the end of the negotiations, the neutrality complex had been mastered, on the basis that we had long and gradually laid out of reducing neutrality to its (military) core combined with an express commitment to the goals of the CFSP and the willingness to work on them to participate actively and in solidarity in future developments.

Epilogue: Poetry and Truth

Since then, Austria has stuck to these promises adamantly, but what has fallen by the wayside are the discrepancies between what the SPÖ and ÖVP promised the Austrians ‘back then’ in spring of 1994, namely that EU accession would take place ‘while maintaining neutrality’. However, given the above-mentioned passages from Schaich, this is little more than another fairy tale.

Anyone who expresses ‘solidarity’ means more or less unconditional loyalty to the alliance (empire).

Not only did the Austrian government confront the Soviet side with their own version of the facts in 1988, but Vienna also subsequently revised its own EC/EU membership application after Vranitzky’s return from Moscow in 1989. Here we note that, having lied to the Soviets in 1988, I suppose Moscow was in no position to re-affirm its concerns after the Fall of the Berlin Wall in autumn 1989. Still, for the record, we note also that Vienna had changed its commitments made to the EC/EU after the Wende, which also indicates that no-one from Austria spoke to the Soviets about this.

Hence, we conclude that the EC/EU accession was a strategic decision pursued by the Austrian government that, at the same time and ever since, continued to lie to the Austrian people about the true history of these negotiations and its consequences.

In 1994, the Austrian people were repeatedly told that acceding the EU would be done while ‘maintaining neutrality’, yet it is clear now that the government’s commitment to henceforth show ‘solidarity’ with the EU’s Common Foreign and Security Policy is now bearing bitter fruit.

At this point I have two questions that need to be answered:

1. If the federal government under Vranitzky consciously broke the constitution and lied Moscow, how arbitrary are any statements about ‘neutrality’ or, above all, ‘solidarity’ (whatever) these days?

2. If the above question regarding the breach of the constitution is at least in the room (i.e., reasonable grounds), another question must be asked—and clarified in court—whether this constitutes high treason?