Social Democratic Party of Austria
The Social Democratic Party of Austria is a social democratic political party in Austria. Founded in 1889 as the Social Democratic Workers' Party of Austria and later known as the Socialist Party of Austria from 1945 until 1991, the party is the oldest extant political party in Austria. Along with the Austrian People's Party, it is one of the country's two traditional major parties. It is positioned on the centre-left on the political spectrum.
Since June 2023, the party has been led by Andreas Babler. It is currently the third largest of five parties in the National Council, having won 41 of 183 seats and 21.1% of the popular vote in the 2024 Austrian legislative election. It holds seats in the legislatures of all nine states; of these, it is the largest party in three The SPÖ is supportive of Austria's membership in the European Union, and it is a member of the Progressive Alliance and Party of European Socialists. It sits with the Progressive Alliance of Socialists and Democrats in the European Parliament; of Austria's 19 MEPs, five are members of the SPÖ. The party has close ties to the Austrian Trade Union Federation and the Austrian Chamber of Labour.
The SDAPÖ was the second largest party in the Imperial Council of the Austro-Hungarian Empire from the 1890s through 1910s. After the First World War, it briefly governed the First Austrian Republic, but thereafter returned to opposition. The party was banned in 1934 following the Austrian Civil War, and was suppressed throughout Austrofascism and the Nazi period. The party was refounded as the Socialist Party of Austria in 1945 and governed as a junior partner of the ÖVP until 1966. In 1970, the SPÖ became the largest party for the first time in post-war history, and Bruno Kreisky became Chancellor, winning three consecutive majorities. From 1987 to 2000 the SPÖ led a grand coalition with the ÖVP before returning to opposition for the first time in 30 years. The party governed again from 2007 to 2017. From 2017 to 2025, the SPÖ was the primary opposition to the ÖVP governments of Sebastian Kurz, Alexander Schallenberg, and Karl Nehammer. Since 2025, the SPÖ has governed as a junior partner of the ÖVP, alongside the NEOS.
History
Monarchy and interwar period
Since its foundation in 1889 as the SDAPÖ, the party has been one of the main political forces in Austria. At the start of the World War I, it was the strongest party in parliament. At the ending of that war in 1918, the party leader Karl Renner became Chancellor of the First Republic. The SDAPÖ lost power in 1920, but it retained a strong base of support.After the break-up of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the Social Democratic Party supported for a time the idea of a union with Berlin in order to constitute a great democratic German republic, thus taking up a revolutionary project of 1848. The victors of the war did not see it that way and set the borders of Austria. In the interwar period, Austromarxism, maintaining its particularities in the face of German social democracy – which had bloodily suppressed the Spartacist uprising of 1919 – and Soviet communism, envisaged the creation of a new international aimed at bringing together the different currents of socialism. However, the attempt did not succeed. The more left-wing Social Democrats, such as Max Adler, relied on the Workers' councils that had developed throughout Central Europe in 1918–1919, particularly in Vienna.
The SDAPÖ was the most established of the European social democratic parties. In the 1920s, about 15 percent of Austrians were members of an association linked to the party. In 1929, it had 720,000 members. The SDAPÖ was almost hegemonic among the working class, but could not compete with the conservatives in the countryside and small towns. The economic crisis of the 1930s, which caused factory closures and increased unemployment, weakened the labor movement and with it the SDAPÖ. In 1930, its membership was down to 650,000 militants.
From 1919 to February 1934, the Social Democrats were in continuous control of the Vienna municipality, which acquired the nickname "Red Vienna". The municipality developed an ambitious policy, including a vast program of construction of workers' housing, which included 60,000 communal social housing units. In addition, free medical care was introduced, and income and luxury taxes were introduced. Culture was clearly emphasized: "Arbeiterbildung" reigned supreme, and the city was home to many internationally renowned intellectuals and artists. Numerous cinemas and theaters subsidized by the municipality opened their doors, and sports became more democratic. This socialist experiment, supported by some renowned intellectuals such as Otto Neurath and Sigmund Freud, also inspired a violent disgust in conservative circles. The press readily described red Vienna as a "Jewish creation" in the hands of "Bolshevism".
Austrofascism and the Third Reich
In 1934, the Christian Social Party, the dominant party on the right, overthrew the democratic system and established an authoritarian corporatist regime inspired by fascism. The social democrats and communists put up armed resistance, but it was quickly crushed.When Anschluss took place in 1938 at the hands of Adolf Hitler's Nazi Germany, he brought Austria into the Second World War.
1945 and onwards
In 1945, the party was reconstituted as the Socialist Party of Austria and was led by Adolf Schärf. The SPÖ entered the government of the Second Republic as part of a grand coalition with the Austrian People's Party until 1966 and with the Communist Party of Austria until 1949. Renner became the first President of Austria.From 1971 to 1983, the SPÖ under Bruno Kreisky was the sole governing party. For the following three years, it ruled in coalition with the Freedom Party of Austria, then up to 2000 it was again part of a grand coalition with the ÖVP, with Franz Vranitzky as Chancellor until 1997. In 1991, it reverted to including Democratic in its name, becoming the Social Democratic Party of Austria. During this period, the grand coalition combined with the Proporz system, whereby important posts throughout the government were shared out between members of the two main parties, evoked rising discontent. This was a factor in the growing popularity of the FPÖ which came second to the SPÖ in the 1999 Austrian legislative election. The following year, the FPÖ and ÖVP formed a right-wing coalition, displacing the SPÖ from a share in government. While this coalition was still in power, the SPÖ's Heinz Fischer was elected president in the 2004 Austrian presidential election. Following the 2006 Austrian legislative election, another grand coalition was formed between the SPÖ and the ÖVP, lasting until 2017, when the SPÖ went back to the opposition. In the 2019 Austrian legislative election, the SPÖ lost 12 seats and shrunk to 21.2%.
After the lost state elections in Lower Austria and Carinthia at the beginning of 2023, there was a power struggle between the moderate social democratic party wing around party leader Pamela Rendi-Wagner and the right-wing, FPÖ-friendly party wing around Burgenland governor Hans Peter Doskozil. The Social Democratic wing has support from socialists and communists. The right wing has support from the middle wing of the party. Disputes and disagreements have existed for years. In March 2023, the situation came to a head after the SPÖ Burgenland stopped paying money to the federal party. On 15 March 2023, a heated party executive meeting led to the call for a new party leadership election. The candidacy for the new leadership was heated and a surprise candidacy from Andreas Babler, mayor of Traiskirchen, which has led to some other candidates to withdraw their candidacy for the 2023 Social Democratic Party of Austria leadership election. This election ended with a win of Andreas Babler. Two days before, Hans Peter-Doskozil had been mistakenly introduced as a new party leader because of "a technical mistake in an Excel sheet"
At the 2024 Austrian legislative election the Social Democratic Party won just 21.1%, marking its worst result ever in the National Council.
Dealing with the past from 1938 to 1945
Concerning the role of the SDAPÖ during Nazi rule from 1938 to 1945, the party started opening its archives and set in a commission to investigate its past conduct. Despite the fact the SDAPÖ had been outlawed and many party members imprisoned under Austrofascism, many SDAPÖ members initially welcomed the Anschluss of Austria into Germany back then and some became members of the Nazi Party. Alfred Gusenbauer issued a declaration promising and supporting a full and open investigation. In 2005, the report about the so-called "brown spots" was completed and published. The report talks about SDAPÖ members and leaders who became members of the Nazi Party during German rule after the Anschluss. One example given in the report is the case of Heinrich Gross, who received many honours from the party and even the government in the post-war period. This was despite the fact that he worked as a Nazi doctor in the euthanasia ward Am Spiegelgrund in Vienna, where human experiments on children were performed. Those children with presumptive mental defects were eventually killed, often by lethal injection. Gross was probably himself involved in the experimentations and killings. The Austrian judicial system protected him for a very long time from any kind of prosecution, something that was very typical in the post-war period. He enjoyed wide support from the SPÖ and party leaders for a very long time.Reflecting the change in attitude towards the past, President Heinz Fischer in a 10 April 2006 interview with the liberal newspaper Der Standard strongly criticised Austria's view on its historical role during Nazi rule. He called the traditional view that Austria was the first victim of Nazi aggression as false. The Moscow Declaration of 1943 by émigrés which called for the independence of Austria from Nazi Germany was a problem since it stated that the war was neither started nor wanted by any Austrian, that Austrian Jewish victims were not mentioned in the declaration, that it took decades for them to receive any kind of compensation and justice from the government and that it was regrettable and inexcusable. His statements were direct criticism of the right-wing government of the coalition ÖVP–FPÖ which rejected compensation to victims and the admission of the co-guilt Austrians carried for crimes committed by them during the Second World War.