Image: (APA/HELMUT FOHRINGER)
Theresa Vonach is moving from the Vice-Chancellor’s cabinet to the federal party, where she will be in charge of communication for the Greens in the future. With Bernhard Ebner, the ÖVP gets a director for organization and campaigns. The 50-year-old was previously the state manager of the Lower Austrian People’s Party.
“Increasing the campaign ability of the ÖVP”
In this function he had to answer for the worst result of his state party since 1945. But the federal ÖVP no longer thinks about that. “With Bernhard Ebner, we have been able to gain one of Austria’s most experienced experts for organizing and conducting election disputes. A personality that I know and appreciate professionally and privately,” said Federal Chancellor and ÖVP leader Karl Nehammer. Ebner will “strengthen the ÖVP’s ability to campaign,” said General Secretary Christian Stocker.
The ÖVP will certainly need the ability to campaign in the coming year. Before the National Council elections in September, the EU Parliament will be elected in June, followed by state elections in Styria and Vorarlberg in autumn.
In the coming election campaigns, Theresa Vonach, previously the Vice Chancellor’s head of communications, will be in charge of Green Communication. However, the Greens already increased their staff in May when they made Olga Voglauer Secretary General. She moved from Carinthia to the federal party and, like Ebner, could not look back on a recent success: in the state elections in March, the Greens, which she led as the top candidate, failed to make it into the state parliament.
Castling also with Neos and FPÖ
However, it is not only the governing parties that are castled. With Claudia Jäger, NEOS will have a new federal manager from September 1st, who will manage the EU election campaign and the National Council election campaign together with Secretary General Douglas Hoyos. His predecessor, Nikola Donig, has been back with the party since April after a brief foray into the NGO sector, as head of strategic communications.
Already at the beginning of the year, but probably with a view to the upcoming elections, Christian Hafenecker had returned to the FPÖ as Secretary General. He shares the role with Michael Schnedlitz, who had inherited him in this role almost exactly three years earlier. In any case, the SPÖ has completely repositioned itself after making Andreas Babler party leader and Klaus Seltenheim and Sandra Breiteneder federal directors.
Source: Nachrichten
