Study proves:

FPÖ particularly Russia-friendly in the EU Parliament

(Bild: ©1STunningART - stock.adobe.com)

In the EU Parliament, the FPÖ demonstrates a particularly friendly attitude towards Russia, China and authoritarian regimes worldwide. This puts the Freedom Party in stark contrast to all other Austrian parties.

The Budapest-based analysis institute Political Capital examined the voting behavior of MEPs from the Central and Eastern European countries Austria, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, Slovakia, Romania and Bulgaria in the 2019-2023 parliamentary term. The votes were divided into three categories: "critical of Russia", "critical of China" and "anti-authoritarian" (i.e. critical of other authoritarian regimes in the world). The more critical votes the mandataries had cast, the higher their score.

With the exception of the Freedom Party, the Austrian parliamentary parties achieved a very high score, even by international standards. The ÖVP, SPÖ, Greens and NEOS scored over 90 percent in all three categories. This roughly corresponds to the average values of their respective parliamentary groups, but in some cases is significantly higher than the values of other individual national parties. Overall, the liberal Renew group leads in all three categories, closely followed - in different order - by the Social Democrats (S&D), the European People's Party (EPP) and the Greens. The "Conservatives and Reformists" (ECR) follow slightly behind. Bringing up the rear in all categories are the right-wing populist "Identity and Democracy" (ID) and the left-wing group.

Closeness to Russia is also surprising in an international comparison
The FPÖ achieved a very low score of 25% in the Kremlin-critical category, even by international standards, which is significantly lower than its ID faction's score of 46%. However, it was Russia's attack on Ukraine in February 2022 that brought about a dramatic rethink in the ID group regarding the Kremlin: Its Russia-critical score climbed from 35 to 52 percent at the time, the study reveals. The change from 26 to 53 percent was even more dramatic in the left-wing group.

With regard to China, FP mandataries tended to adopt a more reserved position, citing Austrian neutrality, and abstained from voting more often, even when they condemned the People's Republic's treatment of the Uyghur minority, for example. According to the study, there was less of a clear line in the voting behavior of the FPÖ in other authoritarian regimes around the world, write the authors of the study.