On the Undermining of Austrian Neutrality - PdA

70 years of the Austrian State Treaty

Declaration of the Central Committee of the Party of Labour of Austria (PdA) on the 70th anniversary of the signing of the Austrian State Treaty, Vienna, May 15, 2025 (English translation released May 26)

On 15 May 1955, the State Treaty ‘concerning the restoration of an independent and democratic Austria’ was signed at Belvedere Palace in Vienna. A state treaty is an international agreement, i.e. one that is binding under international law, to which the signatories commit themselves after respective parliamentary ratification. In this case, in addition to Austria, these states were or are the USA, Great Britain, France and the USSR or Russia as its legal successor.

The treaty - which has constitutional status in Austria - requires Austria to refrain from any political and/or economic unification with Germany; to guarantee the minority rights of the autochthonous Slovenian and Croatian ethnic groups; to maintain a democratic government based on secret elections; to ban National Socialist and fascist groups and activities; to uphold the Habsburg Law; and to redeem German property from the USSR.

In return, the other signatory states undertook to withdraw their military occupation troops within 90 days and to dissolve the Allied Commission as a political control body. Austria thus regained its full sovereignty, having already declared its independence from Germany and the re-establishment of a democratic republic at the end of April 1945.

The State Treaty is linked to two further documents that are to be understood as framework conditions: According to the Moscow Memorandum, the USA, Great Britain, France and the USSR (respectively Russia) guaranteed Austria's territorial integrity within the given borders with the State Treaty. And with the Neutrality Act of 26 October 1955, Austria declared its perpetual neutrality, also with constitutional status.

From a communist point of view, the State Treaty can be seen as a success, as it was the Communist Party and the USSR who first pushed for the possibility of neutrality as a way out of the occupation, while the SPÖ and ÖVP as well as the Western Allies were sceptical for strategic reasons. The State Treaty and neutrality prevented Austria from joining NATO, and for several decades also from joining the ECSC, EAEC and EEC, i.e. the EC - today's EU. Austria was thus spared NATO troops, bases and (nuclear) missile silos.

Nevertheless, Austrian neutrality has always been tainted with deceptive aspects, as it originally claimed neutrality between the capitalist-imperialist NATO and EC states on the one hand, and the USSR, the socialist countries and the Warsaw Treaty on the other. But of course there has never been and can never be neutrality between capitalism and socialism. As a bourgeois-capitalist state in which anti-communism was propagated, Austria was of course always part of the ‘West’ and NATO's imperialist plans. The findings of the radar stations of the Austrian army, which reached as far as the Soviet Union, were of course shared with NATO. Ironically, Austrian capital also utilised its neutrality status from 1955 onwards to maintain a presence in the lucrative trade with Eastern Europe - a fact that could also be built upon after 1990. But not everything was hypocrisy: in some cases, it was certainly possible to act as a mediator, host meetings and host peacekeeping institutions, i.e. to realise neutrality and peace policy at least to some extent - albeit not always for selfless reasons.

Since the counter-revolution in the USSR and Eastern Europe, the situation has changed dramatically. Austria is a member of the EU, which is showing more and more aspects of a military alliance, and of the so-called NATO ‘Partnership for Peace’, the Austrian Armed Forces participate in foreign missions under NATO and EU command and now also in the NATO missile project ‘Sky Shield’. Ultimately, all that remains of Austrian neutrality is a - very formal - non-alignment.

As communists, we have no illusions in the ability of imperialism to keep the peace. The integrity and inviolability of Austrian territory, which are guaranteed by the four major signatory powers - the USA, Great Britain, France and Russia - are ignored almost daily by NATO or NATO states through illegal overflights, while the Austrian federal governments also authorise the transport of weapons and troops through the country - by NATO and into war zones. The fact that Austria would somehow remain neutral between the US/NATO bloc and Russia cannot be seen in reality.

And that is why we also demand that the bourgeois state obey its own laws. We demand a real policy of neutrality and peace, an end to participation in NATO activities and EU militarisation. We completely reject the repeatedly propagated idea of full membership of NATO, which would entail the complete abandonment of neutrality. Neutrality, which is well anchored in the population, is an important hurdle against NATO membership, which we will not relinquish.

But the bourgeois class state and its government will not listen to us. They continue to undermine neutrality, they collaborate with the USA and NATO, they act as warmongers and continue to arm themselves with the EU instead of supporting peace initiatives.

For us, this means that we must intensify the struggle for peace. The working class and the popular strata have no interest in the imperialist wars of the rulers. With this in mind, we defend the provisions of the State Treaty and the Neutrality Act against those who only reluctantly agreed to them back in 1955. However, we know that the fight for peace and self-determination must go further. For true democratic sovereignty of the Austrian nation means that the organised working class, as the ruling class, takes the power to which it is entitled and embarks on the revolutionary, socialist path to a country without oppression, exploitation and war.