1955: The Austrian State Treaty

Since January 1947, the former Allies of the Anti-Hitler-Coalition – the US, the Soviet Union, Great Britain, and France – negotiated the international legal framework under which Austria should become a fully sovereign state. It was not only the Cold War and the disagreement over whether there would be one or more German states that prevented the signing of a state treaty. The central point of conflict was, above all else, the so-called German assets as a kind of reparations for the Allies’ damages of war. This primarily affected the Soviet Union. The Soviet Union also wanted to prevent a renewed “connection” (“Anschluss”) to Germany. On the other hand, however, Moscow only briefly supported the territorial claims made by Tito’s Yugoslavia to parts of Carinthia. As early as 1949, it was decided internally that Austria should only become sovereign with its own army and that this rearmament would have to be controlled by the US.

Only with the division of Germany from 1949 and the death of Soviet dictator Josef Stalin in 1953 was a solution of the Austrian question possible in 1955. His successor Nikita Sergejewitsch Chruschtschow wanted to meet the new US president, Dwight D. Eisenhower, as quickly as possible. As a condition for a meeting of this kind, Eisenhower proposed the military neutrality of Austria according to the Swiss model.

After a courageous trip by an Austrian government delegation including the federal Chancellor Julius Raab, Vice Chancellor Adolf Schärf and State Secretary Bruno Kreisky to Moscow in April 1955, an agreement was reached on the question of neutrality as well as of compensation for German assets. The Soviet Union’s financial claims were laid down in the State Treaty, while those of the other Allies were settled in separate agreements.

Neutrality was not part of the State Treaty, but was passed by the Austrian National Council on 26 October 1955 against the votes of the VdU, the predecessor of the FPÖ . The State Treaty had already been signed on 15 May 1955 at the Belvedere in Vienna by the foreign ministers of the four Allies and Foreign Minister Leopold Figl. Just before the signing, Figl successfully achieved the removal of the clause that maintained Austria’s complicity in the Second World War and National Socialism.

The rights of ethnic minorities were also settled in the State Treaty. Nevertheless, it was not until 2011, following long negotiations under the leadership of then State Secretary Josef Ostermayer, that the question of bilingual road signs in Carinthia was resolved. Even in 1972 protests and violence against the use of place names in Slovenian still occurred, although the terms of their visibility had already been stipulated on the basis of Article 7 of the State Treaty and the political decision of Governor Hans Sima and Chancellor Bruno Kreisky.

As late as the 1980s, Soviet politicians and diplomats prevented Austria from joining the European Community on the basis of the Annexation-ban of the State Treaty.

Meanwhile, a series of military restrictions as well as aviation provisions were declared obsolete with the consent of the former Allies.

The ban against re-engagement in Nazi activities is also part of the State Treaty. For example, in 1985, the New Right Action (ANR) was prevented from taking part in the Austrian Student Union (ÖH) elections by the Constitutional Court under Articles 4 and 9 of the State Treaty.