SPÖ is fighting for a list for the EU elections and the Presidium

The matter is to be resolved today in the federal party’s committees, which will decide how the future presidium will be filled. It should be younger and more feminine, said party leader Andreas Babler on Monday morning. At least it is clear who will lead the SPÖ in the EU elections next summer. As in 2019, when the Social Democrats achieved the worst result in a federal election at the time, Andreas Schieder will be at the top. Behind him follows the Vice President of the EU Parliament Evelyn Regner – both from the federal capital, although Regner is Vienna’s top candidate, but is virtually appointed as a representative of the ÖGB.

• More details: Heide or Darabos in a promising place on the EU list?

The other fixed mandates go to the regional federal states, even if they have recently been chronically unsuccessful in elections at home. Nevertheless, the Lower Austrian Günther Sidl, the new Styrian Elisabeth Grossmann and the Upper Austrian Hannes Heide can still be quite confident of their seats in the European Parliament.

Carinthia sends a woman

The fact that the state governor parties from Burgenland and Carinthia are further behind is due to an algorithm that the SPÖ has created, which, in addition to electoral successes, also contains the number of voters in the federal state and the number of members of the respective state organization. Added to this is the zipper system, which ensured that the Carinthian candidate only ended up in ninth place five years ago.

This time Carinthia is sending a woman, which will probably result in the shaky sixth place on the list. Burgenland doesn’t like that. The state organization there has put ex-Defense Minister Norbert Darabos (SPÖ) as a candidate, but according to the federal party’s count he would only be in seventh place, which is very unlikely to reach.

Darabos is not interested in a corresponding ranking

But Darabos doesn’t want to do a corresponding ranking. It is still unclear who the SPÖ Burgenland will send into the race; this depends on the placement, the state party said on Monday: “Ex-Defense Minister Norbert Darabos is only possible in the promising fifth place – the federal party already said this two times ago Weeks informed.” According to the zipper, a woman would be a candidate when the sixth place on the list was allocated. Seventh place for Burgenland “turns all objective criteria upside down and is therefore a no-go,” it was further emphasized. A possible female candidate had not been named before the meetings.

The Burgenland state party regretted that the discussion was made public. Before the federal committees, she insisted on “clear criteria” and a “list creation based on the rules of the game that were agreed upon in the party by resolution.” The calculation model is disadvantageous, especially for small federal states, since the voter share is a central factor. Nevertheless, Burgenland achieved a “promising 5th place” due to good election results and the high proportion of members.

The party presidency is also to be filled

The party presidium will also be filled at the party conference in November in Graz, from which Vienna’s mayor Michael Häupl will also be resigning after Burgenland’s governor Hans Peter Doskozil. According to reports, the party leadership wants all federal states to be represented with voting rights, although not necessarily by the state party leaders. For example, Salzburg and Vorarlberg are allowed to be represented by women, while the state chairmen are only allowed to be represented as co-opted members without voting rights. Whether these ideas will prevail remains to be seen.

The new statute, which provides for membership decisions if there is more than one candidate for the chairmanship, should be discussed. Carinthia’s governor Peter Kaiser (SPÖ) said in front of the executive committee that he could live with it. The Vienna sub-organization, which is particularly skeptical of grassroots votes, should also be able to go along with the statute group’s proposal.

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