Austria is a country located in Europe. According to AbbreviationFinder, AT is the two-letter ISO code of Austria, and AUT is the three-letter country abbreviation for Austria.
Yearbook 1997
Austria. According to Countryaah, the national day of Austria is October 26. Franz Vranitzky resigned as Chancellor on January 19 after more than ten years in the post. The Social Democrat chancellor had for some time experienced declining figures of opinion and strife in the coalition. He had partially tired of politics and said he wanted to surrender to younger forces, but without leaving the political arena completely. Among other things, he could imagine the post of European Commissioner, as well as becoming Austria’s next president.
The outgoing chancellor’s proposal for successor was approved by the party leadership: the finance minister, 49-year-old Viktor Klima. This in turn appointed Rudolf Edlinger, the Finance Minister of Vienna, as the new Minister of Finance. Vranitsky also left the post of leader of the Social Democratic Sozialdemokratische Partei Österreichs (SPÖ). On April 9, Klima was also elected as his successor on this post.
In early July, Foreign Minister Wolfgang Schüssel succeeded in warding off a declaration of confidence in Parliament. Three of the parliamentary parties had requested the declaration of confidence because of information in the press that Schüssel would have used derogatory epithets on other countries’ politicians. However, Schüssel denied the accusations and was supported by the two government parties SPÖ and Österreichische Volkspartei (ÖVP).
When Vranitsky announced that he did not intend to run in the upcoming presidential election in April 1998, the SPÖ decided in November not to nominate any own candidate but to support Conservative President Thomas Klestil. SPÖ thus wanted to prevent the extreme right-wing man Jörg Haider and his anti-immigrant hostile Die Freiheitlischen from gaining influence over the country’s politics.
Jörg Haider tried to mobilize voters against the government’s decision that Austria should join the monetary union EMU right from the start in 1999, thereby abandoning its own currency, schilling, in favor of the EU currency euro. In early December, however, it was clear that Haider’s name collection was signed by only about 4% of voters. Haider was not in principle opposed to EMU but wanted to wait and see how stable the single currency really becomes.
In July 2007, for the first time in the country’s history, a bill was introduced to introduce a minimum wage. The level was proposed at € 1,167, to be paid 14 times a year. If the proposal is adopted, Austria becomes the 20th country within the EU with minimum wage legislation.
The ÖVP withdrew from the coalition government with SPÖ in July 2008, and this triggered new elections in September. This election was a drastic move to the right. Social democracy declined 6% and was 29% still the country’s largest party, but weakened. ÖVP declined 8.35% to 26%. In contrast, the country’s two fascist parties, the Freedom Party and Jörg Haider’s Future Alliance. The Freedom Party rose 6.5% to 17.54%. Haider went up 6.6% to 10.7%. However, Haider did not enjoy the victory for a long time when he died in a road accident two weeks later. The extreme right wing thus had its best choice since the victory of Nazism in the 1930s.
The threat from the radical right led ÖVP and SPÖ to form a coalition government two months after the election under Social Democrat Werner Faymann’s leadership.
Austria was only slightly affected by the global economic crisis, which seriously hit in 2008. The country’s GDP fell 3.5% in 2009, but unemployment rose only slightly from 4.6% in March 2009 to 4.9% Meanwhile, youth unemployment reached 10.1% – well below the EU average.
The crisis led to an increase in the number of thefts, and after ethnic profiling of Vienna’s inhabitants, the police launched a series of razis targeting the capital’s Moldovan and Georgian inhabitants. At the same time, a stream of reports of police mistreatment of residents of second origin came. Reports that were rarely investigated by police or the judiciary. In August, police killed a 14-year-old and seriously injured a 17-year-old after a theft in Krems. The investigation of the process was carried out by the police themselves, went longitudinally but revealed major differences in the explanations of the various police officers.
In April 2010, President Fischer was re-elected as President with 79.3% of the vote.
In October 2010, the right-wing Liberal Party gained 26% of the vote in the municipal elections in Vienna, becoming the city’s second largest party – after the Social Democracy.
- Shopareview: Offers climate information of Austria in Spring, Summer, Autumn, and Winter, covering maximum and minimum temperature for each of 12 months. Also includes when is best time to visit this country.
In November 2010, the government indicated that it would withdraw its contribution to the EU aid package to Greece as the package would not solve the fundamental problems.
In May 2012, the Department of the Interior issued an official apology to Gambian national Bakary J., who had been tortured in 2006 by 4 police officers after they tried in vain to deport him. The ban on residence permits was lifted and negotiations for compensation were initiated for him.
In 2012, after a 6-year trial, the Department of the Interior allowed police to use electroshock guns. The ministry characterized them as basically “non-lethal”, although there were reports from many countries of human rights violations committed with these guns, and they had several hundred lives on the conscience. The guideline for their use therefore ensures that they must only be used if the police otherwise have to resort to using real guns.