With the military spending on the rise, a declaration by the Meinl-Reisinger Foreign Minister arrives: Austria wants to talk about joining NATO. The belonging to the EU has already zeroed the equidistant position by Moscow and Washington declared in 1955
The theory that if you do not hurt anyone you can be calm, nobody will touch you will go away. Especially if geography sees you in the east of Europe and “protected” by the albeit small Czech Republic and Hungary. We refer to theAustriawhose government, four days ago, opened to the public debate on the opportunity to join the Born abandoning the state of neutral country. The initiative follows the declarations made by the Foreign Minister Beate Meinl-Reisinger47 years old, to the German newspaper Die Welt Am Sonntag. “There is no majority in Parliament or among the population in favor of NATO,” said Meinl-Reisinger, “but a debate on this topic could still be very productive since neutrality alone does not protect us”.
In Vienna these statements have aroused strong indignation from several political sides. A survey carried out by Gallup in 2024, two years after the Russian invasion of Ukraine, had revealed that less than a quarter of the Austrians was in favor of joining the alliance, while 74% supported the maintenance of the neutrality of the country sanctioned by the Constitution since its independence from the allied employment forces, in 1955. In particular, the Party of freedomright-wing party that has close ties with Russia and with President Vladimir Putin himself, he replied hard, affirming in an urgent parliamentary investigation that Meinl-Reisinger was acting “as an armed arm of the Brussels program on the armaments” and criticizing the integration of European defense and the western effort to support Ukrainian in his struggle against the Russian invasion on the Var Scala.
Budget crisis and military expenditure on the rise
Behind this situation there is actually a context of Unprecedented budget crises And drastic cuts to shopping, with the military one that continues to increase from year to year. Beate Meinl-Reisinger is the head of one of the three parties that make up the government coalition; his party, Neosof economic-liberal orientation, stands out from its coalition partners, or the conservative popular party and social democrats, to have a much more favorable position to NATO and to support the creation of a joint European army. Neos also repeatedly solicited discussions on today’s importance of “eternal” neutrality of Austria, implemented at least in part at Soviet stress during the beginning of the Cold War, facing the theme with a courage that other parties have not had.
A small town like Austria can defend its interests only in a “common and strong Europe”, said Meinl-Reisinger to parliamentarians gathered in defense of its foreign policy. Austria, which is already covered by the mutual defense clause of the European Union, is part of a minority, of a handful of EU countries that still maintained neutrality, but with its 9 million inhabitants it is the largest of these. Finland and Sweden, who were part of this group, have abandoned this position in the last two years to join the Atlantic alliance. Even belonging to the Union is also seen as a limit to the neutrality of the country; Austria participates in the NATO initiative “Partenteriato for peace”coordinating and training military personnel, and it is also a country of key transit for NATO with over 3,000 military transport and over 5,000 crashes in only 2024.
The oppositions and the event in Vienna
The oppositions of this line did not late to organize themselves, in fact a great event has been announced in Vienna next October, but the minister said: “It is not that I want to enter open arms in NATO, but we cannot be sitting to believe that nobody will hurt us if we do not hurt anyone. It would be naive. The world has changed. Our neutrality has already changed greatly from the entrance in 1995”.
