Why is Austria looking east?

(To Giampiero Venturi)
08/04/16

The name would suffice Austria to close it here, but the news shelled away in these days without particular debates deserve further study.

Following the visit of Austrian President Heinz Fischer to Moscow, Vienna has made public the intention to increase commercial and military cooperation with Russia.

On the surface, nothing strange. Austria is one of the 6 States of the European Union that are not even part of the Atlantic Alliance. He has always been proud of his neutrality, defending the status of nation felix built halfway between political isolationism and a deeply rooted model of social solidarity.

She is used to doing herself also on the military level, providing to supply her armed forces in large part with products of national industry. It matters from Sweden, but with the exception of Germany, very little from the "Atlantic" countries.

The same entry into the Union took place only in 1995 (it was still the European Community) together with two other rich, neutral and circumspect countries: Finland and indeed Sweden. It was the last enlargement before the entry in 2004 of the bulk of the former Soviet bloc and a restructuring of the Union itself. Not only that: joining the single currency and Schengen has animated fierce debates in the country, exposing its traditional isolationist vocation. In other words, the feeling that Austria is looking to Western Europe reluctantly seems far from unfounded.

Austria is small and Cecco Peppe's times are a century away; those of Metternich, even two. Certainly the numbers do not disturb the dreams of Brussels in its dual value as a center of the Union and of NATO. The fact that another European capital is out of tune, however, makes a certain noise. Not for the first time but with new vigor, a Member State argues against the political choices of Brussels, and in particular against the sanctions against Russia. This time, however, we have gone beyond words and we have moved on to facts.

For many, Vienna is a legacy of the past, a sort of mountain niche prisoner of a buried nobility and destined to grow old like its population. In fact, however, it is the fourth European country in terms of living standards (EU data), which receives 2,7 in exchange for an overall contribution of 1,5 billions of euros (EU 2014 data). 

It goes without saying that if Europe does not care about Austrian numbers, the Austrians are worrying about European numbers.

In fact, the news of the Vienna-Moscow flirtation does not come alone and Austria's intolerance for the light way in which Brussels protects the interests of individual states is not new.

The decision to send soldiers to Brenner to protect the borders from excessive flows of immigrants has sparked a long-distance duel between Vienna's Interior Minister Johanna Mikl-Leitner and the Italian Deputy Minister Filippo Bubbico. The positions are so distant that they cannot find an agreement even on the direction of the flows: the Austrian believes that aspiring immigrants go from Italy, a country de facto without borders, towards the richest north; the Italian maintains instead that the flow passes from Austria to Italy. Direction of the arrows aside, Austria threatened (7 April) to close the Brenner border by putting itself in the wake of Denmark, Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovenia, Sweden, Hungary and even France, which have repeatedly questioned Schengen.

The alarm and the mobilization of Vienna is based on the assumption that the flows have nothing to do with Syria, but come from continental Africa. The welcome line based on political asylum would therefore be unsustainable for Austria.

Is Austria the usual closed corner of Europe or the symptom of a more general continental malaise that is talked about too little?

Reflection is worth waiting for an answer.

(photo: Österreichs Bundesheer)