'Blue bubbles hangover on the Danube' from The Guardian (3 January 1995)

Caption: On 3 January 1995, the British left-wing newspaper The Guardian analyses the political and economic implications for Austria after its accession to the European Union. Source: The Guardian. 03.01.1995. Manchester: The Manchester Guardian and Evening News Ltd. Copyright: (c) GUARDIAN URL: http://www.cvce.eu/obj/blue_bubbles_hangover_on_the_danube_from_the_guardian_3_january_1995-en- d28f2ece-c1af-4fae-b967-e3a77568cab9.html Publication date: 17/09/2012

1 / 3 17/09/2012 Blue bubbles hangover on the Danube

As Austria joins Europe this week can it leave its cosy past behind?

Ian Traynor

For the revellers waltzing their way through the streets of central Vienna in the early hours of 1995, this year’s tipple was a blue bubbly, a confection of cheap champagne and curaçao devised to mark Austria’s accession to the European Union. While sentimental nostalgia reigned as usual at the annual festival of kitsch that is the worldwide transmission of the Vienna Philharmonic’s New Year’s Day concert, across the road the city’s symphony orchestra looked forward rather than back, blasting out the Euro-anthem, Beethoven’s Ninth.

That contrast between cosy Strauss polkas and monumental Teutonic humanism seems to sum up Austria’s ambivalence as it stepped gingerly into the European Union this week. Austria is eager for Brussels’s embrace, but it is wary of forfeiting its cherished identity as a small, neutral republican country that has somehow survived the ruins of empire in 1918, Hitler’s annexation of his native country in 1938, and the decade of four power occupation which followed the collapse of 1945, the Vienna of Harry Lime.

Since the Russians left in 1955 Austria has sailed a canny and prosperous course. Yet it joined the EU on January 1 as part of the new trio with Sweden and Finland that pushes the 12 to the 15. Is this the end of an era, farewell to the Vienna of sticky chocolate cake and sugary Strauss? Hello to an uncertain new world of breached taboos. Berlusconi-style populism, and Euro-federalism?

The politicians have been talking big: a historic day, the greatest moment for the country since the state treaty of 1955 ended the post-war occupation. Yet the ordinary Viennese punter is more concerned about cheaper butter. According to government propaganda, food prices are to fall by up to 10 per cent, but people are sceptical of official claims that the average family will be £60 a month better off.

For Austria, EU membership signals a certain coming of age after a long and lonely post-war adolescence as a small, neutral buffer between the Cold War blocs. For those with fond hankerings for the Habsburg imperial heyday, membership also restores Vienna to its place at the heart of Europe. Austria is no longer a small country on the fringe of the free world, a magnet only for spies and skiers.

For the EU, Austrian membership extends the Union to the borders of the Balkans, closer than ever to its biggest embarrassment, Bosnia, and right to the line of the old Iron Curtain where countries such as Hungary, the Czech republic, and Poland are now clamouring for admission.

For the big EU powers, Austria’s accession is a mixed blessing. As with the Scandinavians, affluent Austria will be a net contributor to Brussels’ coffers. So there is no economic pain. It also shows every sign of lining up in the German-led camp on the federalist issues racking the EU. The Austrian schilling is in any case pegged closely to the German mark and already the country’s leaders talk positively of monetary union.

Germany is delighted to see Austria in the EU since it means she is no longer alone in bordering the less stable half of the Continent. Vienna, as the EU’s eastern outpost, shares Bonn’s eagerness to expand into the former communist bloc, an area of central Europe that it shaped through centuries of imperial rule and where it maintains considerable commercial and diplomatic influence.

Yet these common interests and the eastward shift in the Union’s centre of gravity have provoked fears in Paris. Last week Austria’s Chancellor Franz Vranitzky revealed that François Mitterrand had complained at last month’s Essen summit that German unification and Austria’s entry now meant there were three German states in the EU. “I told him straight away that we are not the third German state,” responded Vranitsky. “I told him that we are the first and only Austrian state. There will be no spectre of a Teutonic bloc.”

Austrians are distinctly ambivalent towards their mighty neighbour, and EU membership will obviously put

2 / 3 17/09/2012 the ambivalence to new tests. While Austrians merrily pocket the Deutschmarks of the millions of German tourists who visit each year, anti-German sentiment can explode, at least if the two sides confront each other on the football pitch or the tennis courts.

Whatever Austria’s impact on Europe, the effect of European membership on Austria will be to hasten the break-up of the systems of cosy and corrupt, though successful, coalition and patronage that have characterised the post-war republic.

Now, thanks to the tub-thumping of Joerg Haider, the young, rightwing, iconoclastic, telegenic Freedom Party leader, that post-war establishment is looking distressed. Haider is launching a “people’s power” campaign he says should install a “third republic” based on plebiscitary politics and direct democracy.

He has found an unlikely ally in the form of President Thomas Klestil, who has sparked a mini- constitutional crisis by demanding powers parallel to the government’s, insisting he will not be confined to a ceremonial head-of-state role. Klestil has chosen foreign policy and the EU as the battleground for his power struggle, claiming one of Austria’s seats at Euro-summits. Klestil’s and Haider’s campaigns are far from over. As the hangovers lift from the blue bubbly, it looks as though Europe will bring Austria more than just cheaper butter.

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