Austrian People's Party

History

The ÖVP is the successor of the Christian Social Party, a staunchly conservative movement founded in 1893 by Karl Lueger, mayor of Vienna and highly controversial right-wing populist. Most of the members of the party during its founding belonged to the former Fatherland Front, which was led by chancellor Engelbert Dollfuss, also a member of the Christian Social Party before the Anschluss. While still sometimes honored by ÖVP members for resisting Adolf Hitler, the regime built by Dollfuss was authoritarian in nature and has been dubbed as Austrofascism. In its present form, the ÖVP was established immediately after the restoration of Austria's independence in 1945 and it has been represented in both the Federal Assembly ever since. In terms of Federal Assembly seats, the ÖVP has consistently been the strongest or second-strongest party and as such it has led or at least been a partner in most Austria's federal cabinets.

In the 1945 Austrian legislative election, the ÖVP won a landslide victory in Austria's first postwar election, winning almost half the popular vote and an absolute majority in the legislature. However, memories of the hyper-partisanship that had plagued the First Republic prompted the ÖVP to maintain the grand coalition with the Communist Party of Austria (KPÖ) and the Social Democratic Party of Austria (SPÖ) that had governed the country since the restoration of independence in early 1945. The ÖVP remained the senior partner in a coalition with the SPÖ until 1966 and governed alone from 1966 to 1970. It reentered the government in 1986, but has never been completely out of power since the restoration of Austrian independence in 1945 due to a longstanding tradition that all major interest groups were to be consulted on policy.

After the 1999 Austrian legislative election, several months of negotiations ended in early 2000 when the ÖVP formed a coalition government with the right-wing populist Freedom Party of Austria (FPÖ) led by Jörg Haider. The FPÖ had won just a few hundred more votes than the ÖVP, but was considered far too controversial to lead a government. The ÖVP's Wolfgang Schüssel became Chancellor—the first ÖVP Chancellor of Austria since 1970. This caused widespread outrage in Europe and the European Union imposed informal diplomatic sanctions on Austria, the first time that it imposed sanctions on a member state. Bilateral relations were frozen (including contacts and meetings at an inter-governmental level) and Austrian candidates would not be supported for posts in European Union international offices. Austria threatened to veto all applications by countries for European Union membership until the sanctions were lifted. A few months later, these sanctions were dropped as a result of a fact-finding mission by three former European prime ministers, the so-called "three wise men". The 2002 legislative election resulted in a landslide victory (42.27% of the vote) for the ÖVP under Schüssel. Haider's FPÖ was reduced to 10.16% of the vote. At the state level, the ÖVP has long dominated the rural states of Lower Austria, Upper Austria, Salzburg, Styria, Tyrol and Vorarlberg. It is less popular in the city-state of Vienna and in the rural, but less strongly Catholic states of Burgenland and Carinthia. In 2004, it lost its plurality in the State of Salzburg, where they kept its result in seats (14) in 2009. In 2005, it lost its plurality in Styria for the first time.

After the Alliance for the Future of Austria (BZÖ) split from the FPÖ in 2005, the BZÖ replaced the FPÖ in the government coalition which lasted until 2007. Austria for the first time had a government containing a party that was founded during the parliamentary term. In the 2006 Austrian legislative election, the ÖVP were defeated and after much negotiations agreed to become junior partner in a grand coalition with the SPÖ, with new party chairman Wilhelm Molterer as Finance Minister and Vice-Chancellor under SPÖ leader Alfred Gusenbauer, who became Chancellor. The 2008 Austrian legislative election saw the ÖVP lose 15 seats, with a further 8.35% decrease in its share of the vote. However, the ÖVP won the largest share of the vote (30.0%) in the 2009 European Parliament election with 846,709 votes, although their number of seats remained the same.

The ÖVP had minor losses in the 2013 Austrian legislative election, and the grand coalition with the SPÖ continued until the 2017 Austrian legislative election, when the ÖVP changed its colour to turquoise and won its first legislative election since 2002. The party underwent a change in its image after Sebastian Kurz became chairman, changing its colour from the traditional black to turquoise, and adopting the alternate name The New People's Party (). It became the largest party after the 2017 election, and formed a coalition government with the FPÖ. This collapsed eighteen months later due to the Ibiza affair, leading to the 2019 election, after which the ÖVP formed a new coalition with The Greens.

An investigation into the Ibiza affair by a parliamentary subcommittee, an unstable Cabinet plagued by resignations, and ultimately a corruption inquiry, forced Kurz to resign the chancellorship in October 2021. Kurz was replaced by Karl Nehammer in 2021 as party leader and Chancellor. In the 2024 legislative election, the party fell to second behind the FPÖ. Following the surge of the FPÖ in various polls throughout late 2024 and early 2025, as well as the collapse of the ÖVP-SPÖ-NEOS coalition talks, Nehammer resigned as party leader and was replaced with Christian Stocker as acting leader. After failed talks with the FPÖ, the party would eventually form a coalition with the SPÖ and NEOS, with Stocker as Chancellor.

Ideology and platform

The ÖVP is described as Christian-democratic, conservative, and liberal-conservative. The party has also been described as a catch-all party of the centre-right, in the vein of the Christian Democratic Union of Germany. For most of its existence, the ÖVP has explicitly defined itself as Catholic and anti-socialist, with the ideals of subsidiarity as defined by the encyclical Quadragesimo anno and decentralisation.

For the first election after World War II, the ÖVP presented itself as the Austrian Party (), was anti-Marxist and regarded itself as the Party of the centre (). The ÖVP consistently held power—either alone or in so-called black–red coalition with the Social Democratic Party of Austria (SPÖ)—until 1970, when the SPÖ formed a minority government with the Freedom Party of Austria (FPÖ). The ÖVP's economic policies during the era generally upheld a social market economy.

The party's campaign for the 2017 legislative election under the party chairman Sebastian Kurz was dominated by a rightward shift in policy which included a promised crackdown on illegal immigration and a fight against political Islam, making it more similar to the program of the FPÖ, the party that Kurz chose as his coalition partner after the ÖVP won the election. The party underwent a change in its image after Kurz became chairman, changing its colour from the traditional black to turquoise, and adopting the name The new People's Party ().

Organization

Symbols

ÖVP-Logo (80er).svg|Logo used in the 1980s ÖVP Logo.svg|Logo before 2017 Austrian People's Party logo.png|Logo with flag before 2017 Volkspartei Logo 2018.svg|Party logo (2017–2022) Logo neue VP tuerkis.png|Turquoise variant of the party logo (2017–2022) Volkspartei Logo 2022.svg|Party logo since 2022

Chairpersons since 1945

The chart below shows a timeline of ÖVP chairpersons and the Chancellors of Austria. The left black bar shows all the chairpersons (Bundesparteiobleute, abbreviated as CP) of the ÖVP party and the right bar shows the corresponding make-up of the Austrian government at that time. The red (SPÖ) and black (ÖVP) colours correspond to which party led the federal government (Bundesregierung, abbreviated as Govern.). The last names of the respective Chancellors are shown, with the Roman numeral standing for the cabinets.

ImageSize = width:400 height:530 PlotArea = width:350 height:450 left:50 bottom:50 Legend = columns:3 left:50 top:25 columnwidth:50

DateFormat = yyyy Period = from:1945 till:2023 TimeAxis = orientation:vertical ScaleMajor = unit:year increment:5 start:1945

1. there is no automatic collision detection,
2. so shift texts up or down manually to avoid overlap

Colors = id:ÖVP value:gray(0.25) legend:ÖVP id:SPÖ value:red legend:SPÖ id:independent value:gray(0.85) legend:independent

1. id:FPÖ value:blue legend:FPÖ

Define $dx = 25 # shift text to right side of bar Define $dy = -4 # adjust height

PlotData =

bar:CP color:red width:25 mark:(line,white) align:left fontsize:S

from:1945 till:1945 shift:($dx,1) color:ÖVP text:Leopold Kunschak from:1945 till:1952 shift:($dx,$dy) color:ÖVP text:Leopold Figl from:1952 till:1960 shift:($dx,$dy) color:ÖVP text:Julius Raab from:1960 till:1963 shift:($dx,$dy) color:ÖVP text:Alfons Gorbach from:1963 till:1970 shift:($dx,$dy) color:ÖVP text:Josef Klaus from:1970 till:1971 shift:($dx,$dy) color:ÖVP text:Hermann Withalm from:1971 till:1975 shift:($dx,$dy) color:ÖVP text:Karl Schleinzer from:1975 till:1979 shift:($dx,$dy) color:ÖVP text:Josef Taus from:1979 till:1989 shift:($dx,$dy) color:ÖVP text:Alois Mock from:1989 till:1991 shift:($dx,$dy) color:ÖVP text:Josef Riegler from:1991 till:1995 shift:($dx,$dy) color:ÖVP text:Erhard Busek from:1995 till:2007 shift:($dx,$dy) color:ÖVP text:Wolfgang Schüssel from:2007 till:2008 shift:($dx,$dy) color:ÖVP text:Wilhelm Molterer from:2008 till:2011 shift:($dx,$dy) color:ÖVP text:Josef Pröll from:2011 till:2014 shift:($dx,$dy) color:ÖVP text: Michael Spindelegger from:2014 till:2017 shift:($dx,$dy) color:ÖVP text: Reinhold Mitterlehner from:2017 till:end shift:($dx,$dy) color:ÖVP text: Sebastian Kurz from:2021 till:end shift:($dx,$dy) color:ÖVP text: Karl Nehammer bar:Govern. color:red width:25 mark:(line,white) align:left fontsize:7

from:1945 till:1946 shift:($dx,-2) color:SPÖ text:Renner from:1946 till:1949 shift:($dx,$dy) color:ÖVP text:Figl I from:1949 till:1952 shift:($dx,$dy) color:ÖVP text:Figl II from:1952 till:1953 shift:($dx,$dy) color:ÖVP text:Figl III from:1953 till:1956 shift:($dx,$dy) color:ÖVP text:Raab I from:1956 till:1959 shift:($dx,$dy) color:ÖVP text:Raab II from:1959 till:1960 shift:($dx,$dy) color:ÖVP text:Raab III from:1960 till:1961 shift:($dx,-2) color:ÖVP text:Raab IV from:1961 till:1963 shift:($dx,$dy) color:ÖVP text:Gorbach I from:1963 till:1964 shift:($dx,$dy) color:ÖVP text:Gorbach II from:1964 till:1966 shift:($dx,$dy) color:ÖVP text:Klaus I from:1966 till:1970 shift:($dx,$dy) color:ÖVP text:Klaus II from:1970 till:1971 shift:($dx,$dy) color:SPÖ text:Kreisky I from:1971 till:1975 shift:($dx,$dy) color:SPÖ text:Kreisky II from:1975 till:1979 shift:($dx,$dy) color:SPÖ text:Kreisky III from:1979 till:1983 shift:($dx,$dy) color:SPÖ text:Kreisky IV from:1983 till:1986 shift:($dx,$dy) color:SPÖ text:Sinowatz from:1986 till:1987 shift:($dx,$dy) color:SPÖ text:Vranitzky I from:1987 till:1990 shift:($dx,$dy) color:SPÖ text:Vranitzky II from:1990 till:1994 shift:($dx,$dy) color:SPÖ text:Vranitzky III from:1994 till:1996 shift:($dx,$dy) color:SPÖ text:Vranitzky IV from:1996 till:1997 shift:($dx,$dy) color:SPÖ text:Vranitzky V from:1997 till:2000 shift:($dx,$dy) color:SPÖ text:Klima from:2000 till:2003 shift:($dx,$dy) color:ÖVP text:Schüssel I from:2003 till:2007 shift:($dx,$dy) color:ÖVP text:Schüssel II from:2007 till:2008 shift:($dx,$dy) color:SPÖ text:Gusenbauer from:2008 till:2016 shift:($dx,$dy) color:SPÖ text:Faymann from:2016 till:2017 shift:($dx,$dy) color:SPÖ text:Kern from:2017 till:2019 shift:($dx,$dy) color:ÖVP text:Kurz I from:2019 till:2020 shift:($dx,$dy) color:independent text:Bierlein from:2020 till:2021 shift:($dx,$dy) color:ÖVP text:Kurz II from:2021 till:2021 shift:($dx,$dy) color:ÖVP text:Schallenberg from:2021 till:end shift:($dx,$dy) color:ÖVP text:Nehammer

Election results

National Council

President

European Parliament

[[Distribution of seats in the Austrian Landtage|State Parliaments]]

Results Timeline