85 posts
The ECtHR on Access to Case File
I just finished translation of the ECtHR’s decision on admissibility of Application no. 42551/98 by Oleg Svinarenkov against Estonia, into the Estonian language. The facts of the case relate to deliberate homicide and unlawful possession of a fir...
Loss of Nationality, Deception, Citizenship and EU Law: Case C-135/08
The Court of Justice has handed down an interesting and important judgment on the loss of citizenship and its relationship to EU law. In its judgment in Case C-135/08 Janko Rottmann v. Freistaat Bayern, the Court held that EU law,...
Austrian farm subsidies on the map
FollowTheMoney.eu and its two current projects, farmsubsidy.org and fishsubsidy.org, are based on a very simple methodology: more transparency in public policy will lead to a better informed public debate and better public policies. Without analysis...
Is Austria Set To Join The Honourable Company of PIIGs?
Hypo Alpe Adria bank, the Austrian arm of the Bavarian bank Bayern LB, was nationalized on Monday for the symbolic price of three euros. This unexpected action brought to the world’s attention something which has been obvious to some of us for...
Vienna - Back to the Start
It’s interesting visiting a city again after a ten year absence. I’m on a bunpy flight back to London at the moment, after a very nice few days in Vienna. I hadn’t been there since I went on a trip with my high school band in 1998. Vienna was a...
Landtag’s election far-right campaign placard in Upper Austria
The Landtag elections of the Upper Austria constitutive federal state in Austria are to take place on Sunday the 27th of September 2009. A Landtag is a unicameral legislature for a constitutive federal state, while Austria’s national bicameral parl...
British comic Sacha Baren Cohen's Brüno: 'the most famous Austrian since Hitler'
'Borat was so 2006' - in 2009 it is Brüno who is showing some skin on billboards across Europe. The latest creation from the English shock-comic is a gay Austrian fashion journalist. From 24 July, an alternative version screens in UK cinemas for tee...
Germany, France, and Austria demand interventions in the milk market
In a joint note, Germany, France, and Austria have demanded interventions into the milk market due to low milk prices.The request was directed to the 2944th AGRICULTURE and FISHERIES Council meeting on Monday, and there was supported by Lithuania, Sl...
Germany and Austria still half closed to "new" workers
The Germans and Austrians will still restrict Polish and other "new" workers on their labour markets after May 1. This was expected, but on Monday they formally confirmed it in letters to the European Commission. This means they will fully...
Libertas at less than 2% in Austria opinion poll
A new opinion polls places Libertas at less than 2% in Austria.This on top of their inability to run any candidates in Germany due to their inability to find 4000 voters out of a population of 82mil to support themeffectively closes of the German sp...
Austrian Economy Contracted Much More Than Expected in Q1 2009 [Toni STRAKA]
The Austrian economy shrank by 1.5% in Q1 2009, accelerating the downtrend after a contraction of minus 0.2% (preliminary) in Q4 2008. According to a (German Language only) press release from the Austrian central bank the negative growth figure came...
Austria and the European Parliament Elections: a look at 1999 and 2004
By Daniel Spichtinger. With the input of Stefan Fersterer.On June 7 Austrians will cast their votes in the 2009 elections to the European Parliament. Let’s look at how the last two election campaigns in 1999 and 2004 were run to find out what may a...
Press review: the European right after Jörg Haider's death
pFollowing the death of the Austrian politician after a car accident on 11 October, the European press speculates on the consequences for coalition negotiations in the country. Haider's Alliance for the Future of Austria could now possibly reunite wi...
One sentence on: Deference
bSometimes you are not sure/b if you are allowed not to be unhappy about a href="http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/10/12/europe/austria.php"someone's death/a.br /br /i(This is all I would like to say on this subject.)/idiv class="feedflare" a href="ht...
Jörg Haider dead
Jörg Haider has died in a car accident. This will make a christian democrat+far right coalition even more unlikely. Can his party survive him? I suppose some people might be reluctant to vote for the more overtly nasty Strache, and I don’t im...
The Return of the Radical Right in Austria
Alfred Gusenbauer, Austria's outgoing Social Democratic Chancellor On Sunday 28 September, Austria went to the polls early. This time, the grand coalition between the Social Democrats (SPÖ) and Christian Democratic Austrian People’s Party (Ö...
Austrian vote sends shockwaves through Brussels: Should Turkey worry?
Austrian vote sends shockwaves through Brussels: Should Turkey worry? More than once I had the pleasure of meeting with former Austrian Chancellor Alfred Gusenbauer when we were both representing European youth movements in the mid to late 80s. Smoot...
Elections in Austria: Yuck
Short version: for the last two years, Austria has been run by a “grand coalition” government of the two largest parties, the Social Democrats and the center-right People’s Party. Everybody hated this arrangement, though, and it di...
Elections South of the Veal Sausage Equator
The local version of Weißwurst ( = veal sausage, lit. white sausage) is a Munich...
Austria’s Politics in Flux - Again
By Dimitris Tsarouhas A year and a half ago, Austrian politics returned to its stable pattern of grand coalition governments. Following the turbulence of the centre- and far-right coalition, the 2006 election result led to the formation of yet anoth...
Austrian data now online
It took four days running a web robot (screen scraper) to extract the data from the Austrian government website but now all the data published on the 23 June is available in a more use-friendly format here. For instance you can search by region, by s...
SPÖ and the EU: a radical change in Austria
I wanted to start this blog already a while ago because I believe that the EU debates in the member states are worthwhile to be accessible to a wider audience, in Brussels and elsewhere. This English language blog is about the Austria in the EU. My f...
Austrian farm subsidy website is launched - and immediately crashes
Austria today became the first EU member state to launch a website on farm subsidy payments in accordance with the new transparency requirements of the EU Financial Regulation. Within hours, the site had crashed. While the Austrian government...
