FPÖ celebrates 70th anniversary with ceremonial act and people's festival

The FPÖ was founded in 1956 and is thus one of the oldest still-existing parties in the Austrian party system. The 70th anniversary marks, according to the party, seven decades of political work, in the course of which the Freedomites held several government participations at the federal level. The current party leadership was responsible for the substantive direction of the anniversary celebrations.

Among the program items of the festivities were, in addition to the speeches of the party leadership, appearances by guests from other European countries. Invited were, among others, representatives of right-wing populist and national-conservative parties from several EU member states as well as from Austria's neighboring countries. The party hoped this would send a signal effect beyond national borders.

International Guests and Prominent Figures

The announced appearances of individual international guests attracted particular media attention. In addition to Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán and Czech opposition politician Andrej Babiš, Schlager singer Roberto Blanco was also expected as a star guest of the people's festival. From German federal politics, among others, the co-chairman of the BSW, Tino Chrupalla, traveled in.

Vienna's Hofburg as the venue of the ceremonial act is symbolically charged: the building on Heldenplatz houses the President's Office and is regularly the scene of state-bearing ceremonies. With the choice of the setting, the FPÖ connected, according to observers' assessment, the claim of staging itself as a state-bearing force. Stephansplatz in the heart of Vienna, by contrast, offered the subsequent people's festival a location with high pedestrian frequency.

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In terms of content, the party leadership around Herbert Kickl and the co-chairwoman of the German AfD parliamentary group, Alice Weidel, announced a programmatic speech that was to mark the kickoff of the election campaign for the upcoming federal presidential election. Kickl had repeatedly announced his intention to run as the FPÖ candidate in the October election and wanted, according to the party, to use the anniversary as a platform for this plan.

Reactions and Political Context

Observers also interpreted the staging of ceremonial act and people's festival as an attempt to mobilize its own supporters after internal tensions of the past months. The combination of a dignified setting and a mass festival was meant, accordingly, to send a signal of unity.

From the opposition came occasional criticism of the instrumentalization of the Hofburg for a party celebration. The City of Vienna and the Federal President's Office initially declined to comment on the event when asked. The FPÖ rejected the accusations and pointed to the tradition of marking party anniversaries with ceremonial acts.

The event is part of a series of European anniversaries of right-wing populist and national-conservative parties this year. Comparable celebrations took place in recent months, among other places, in Hungary and France. For the FPÖ, the 70th anniversary is, according to its own statements, an occasion to set both retrospective and programmatic signals of a new beginning.