Man rebels

Scurrilous: the referendum against the referendums

The number of referendums has risen at an inflationary rate in recent years. The reason for this is very simple: more and more private individuals are discovering petitions for referendums as a business model. They collect a net profit of 13,686 euros for every referendum petition signed by 100,000 voters.

It works like this: Anyone wishing to launch a petition for a referendum must first pay a cost contribution of 622 euros for submitting the application and subsequently a printing cost contribution of 2800 euros. As soon as the petition has reached the registration threshold of 100,000 signatures, the initiator receives back five times the amount of the cost contribution! This currently amounts to 17,100 euros, resulting in a net profit of around 13,700 per petition.

Municipal employee fights "referendum business model"
A municipal employee from Lower Austria is now taking action against this. Manuel Plöchl, himself responsible for referendums in the Lower Austrian municipality of St. Andrä-Wördern, has launched a petition against referendums for the purpose of personal enrichment. This can be signed from March 31 to April 7.

Any "profit" will be donated
However, as he does not want to enrich himself in the process, Plöchl promises that if he is successful, i.e. if 100,000 signatures are reached, he will donate a considerable portion of the returned cost contribution to a children's hospice. In his petition, he calls on politicians to amend the 2018 Referendum Act so that the amount to be refunded only covers the cost contributions previously made.

Most of the referendums reach the 100,000 mark
A total of 43 of the last 61 referendums (2020 to 2024) reached the 100,000 signature mark. The initiators collected a total of 588,498 euros in taxpayers' money for this - after deducting the cost contributions. Just 18 referendums have failed to reach the 100,000 signature mark by more or less a narrow margin. The first referendum took place in 1964. In the 35 years from 1964 to 1999, a total of 21 referendums were initiated. From 2020, the number of referendums almost doubled, and from 2022 there was a veritable explosion in the number of referendums. There were 16 in 2022, 19 in 2023 and 14 referendums in the previous year.

Democracy has its price and its pitfalls.(Bild: P. Huber)

Need for reform in the face of explosive growth
In addition, the costs incurred by the municipalities in implementing the federal law are reimbursed by the federal government. In this respect, the federal government has to pay a lump sum of 40 cents per eligible voter to the municipalities for each registration period. This amounts to over 2.5 million euros in tax money each time, up to three times a year. "It is easy to see from the flood of registrations for new referendums that more and more private individuals are discovering this business idea for themselves. There are currently 32 referendums in the support phase - these were only registered with the BMI in 2024 or 2025," says Plöchl.