CONSTITUTIONAL REFORMS ON THE FEDERAL LEVEL: A NEVER-ENDING STORY?
History
Commissions have periodically been established to reform and modernize the Austrian federal system, but their efforts have always failed, mainly because of the anti-federal attitude of the bureaucratic staff in the administration and the reluctance of the Länder to take on new competencies and responsibilities that might spark political conflict.
One crucial reform project was the Structural Reform of Competencies of 1989 to 1994, which was initiated because of Austria’s possible accession to the European Union. The Länder called for a fundamental redistribution of competencies within the federal system in order to compensate for their anticipated loss of legislative power and influence. Both sides, Bund and Länder, agreed as well not to deal with a reform of the financial constitution and the rather complicated system of financial equalisation. Thus, a deep-reaching modification of the Austrian Federal Constitution was excluded from the beginning of the discussions.The Political Agreement on the Reorganization of the Federation was signed in 1992 by the federal chancellor (on behalf of the federal government) and by the chairman of the Conference of State Governors (on behalf of the Länder). This agreement stipulated that a government bill dealing with federal reform was to be drafted before the date of the referendum on membership in the European Union, so that it could be enacted no later than the constitutional amendment authorizing Austria‘s accession to the EU. Even though a bill entitled Structural Reform of the Federation was indeed drafted, it proved impossible for the national parliament to enact it. In the general election of 1994 the incumbent SPO/OVP grand coalition lost the necessary two-thirds majority in the National Council, and in the end the Länder rejected the compromise that the government was obliged to negotiate with the opposition, on whose support the bill then depended.
A second effort at structural reform of the federal system was the Austrian Convention, which met from June 2003 to January 2005. While the Structural Reform of Competencies had been initiated by Austria’s forthcoming accession to the European Union, the Austrian Convention was an apparent result of Austria’s EU membership. Although the convention was tasked with submitting proposals for reforming the Austrian political system and constitution, it finished its work without reaching a consensus on the most intensively debated matters, which included the division of competencies and the restructuring of the financial relationships among the federal level, the Länder, and the local governments, as well as the creation of a new charter of fundamental rights that was to include social guarantees. It became clear that only a grand coalition formed by the two main parties, the Social Democrats and the People’s Party, could succeed in reforming Austria’s federal system.
Although both reform projects had similar goals there was one important difference: during the late 1990s and the first years of the twenty-first century, the paradigms of the discussion about the Austrian federal system had changed. Reform discussions no longer dealt with the strengthening of the powers of the Länder but with the future of the federal system itself.