FPÖ Has the Most Top Earners Among Austria's National Council Members

The top income category – more than 12,000 euros per month on top of the base salary – is reached by 14 members of parliament. Nine of them sit in the blue (FPÖ) parliamentary club, as the analysis shows. This puts the FPÖ clearly in the lead in this category. In the second-highest tier (8,001 to 12,000 euros), both the ÖVP and SPÖ also have nine members each.

Leading in the number of paid functions is, as in previous years, Axel Kassegger of the FPÖ with a total of nine paid extra-parliamentary functions. In second place is Andreas Minnich of the ÖVP with seven functions. For honorary activities, two women are at the top: ÖVP member Elisabeth Scheucher-Pichler and SPÖ member Katrin Auer with 19 honorary positions each.

The Greens barely stand out with side jobs. Across the entire Green club, nobody earns more than 4,000 euros per month extra. The share of women in the second-highest income category also shows a clear imbalance: Of 22 mandate holders in this tier, fewer than one-fifth – four – are women.

Types of Secondary Activities

The types of secondary activities are broad. 57 members of parliament are active in municipal politics, 15 of them as mayors of their municipalities. 26 members run companies that they themselves own or in which they hold a stake. 21 work in the public service, 17 for parties or party-affiliated organizations, and 16 in agriculture.

In honorary engagement, the ÖVP leads with an average of 6.6 functions per member, followed by the SPÖ with 6.1 and the FPÖ with 4.4. The data comes from the annual transparency disclosures that all National Council members are required to submit.

Political Reactions

The base salary of a member of parliament currently amounts to 10,351 euros per month. Those who earned more than 12,000 euros per month extra in the previous year fall into the highest disclosed category of the transparency list.

The distribution is triggering political reactions. SPÖ deputy club chair Julia Herr criticized the FPÖ with the words: "Im Parlament blockieren, draußen kassieren – das ist der wahre blaue Leistungsgedanke der FPÖ."

Sharp criticism also came from the ÖVP. "Blaue Gagenkaiser ohne Gegenleistung," mocked the Secretary General of the People's Party, Nico Marchetti, in a press release, accusing the FPÖ of being "unehrlich und scheinheilig" when it stirs up envy debates and agitates against the system.

The analysis follows an APA investigation into the transparency lists that have been mandatory to publish since 2022. The data is based on the income thresholds and function reports that the members of parliament have submitted to parliament themselves. The classification is divided into six tiers, starting with category one with income up to 1,000 euros per month up to the highest tier with more than 12,000 euros.

Methodology of the Analysis

When comparing the overall figures, it is notable that while the FPÖ dominates in absolute top earners, it lags behind the ÖVP and SPÖ in per capita honorary engagement. The Greens also barely appear in the highest categories, which observers attribute to the club's profile and internal rules on secondary activities.

For the total number of paid secondary activities of all 183 members of parliament, this yields an average of around 1.4 functions per mandate holder. However, this average masks the sharp differences between factions and also between individual members.

The Freedom Party (FPÖ) takes the analysis in stride. Mandate holders from the blue parliamentary club point out that the disclosed functions have been properly reported and are legally permissible. The FPÖ stated that it would not comment on the criticism from competitors.

The NEOS faction plays a minor role in the analyzed data. NEOS members do not notably stand out in either the highest or second-highest income category. This also applies to the number of paid functions per capita.

Regardless of the partisan assessment, the analysis shows that the issue of secondary income in the National Council remains a perennial topic. The range extends from members of parliament without side jobs to mandate holders with a dozen paid functions.