On Sunday, Austria’s far-right Freedom Party (FPÖ) came first in the country’s election — and local investors Sifted has spoken to have mixed feelings. The pro-Kremlin, anti-Islam and anti-immigration FPÖ won 28.9% of votes, according to official results. The party will have to form a coalition with other parties to govern, but it’s likely to take a lead in forming new conservative policies.
“Personally, I’m quite troubled to see the shift towards the right in Austria. It’s frustrating to see that people think the only hope to see tangible change in our country is to go for extremes,” Lisa-Marie Fassl, managing partner at Fund F by Female Founders, tells Sifted. “On the level of overall startup policies, I don’t think that we’re going to see significant impact — whether positive or negative. I think we’re gonna have the same ‘stillstand’ that we’ve been used to for so long and which we can’t afford from an economic and societal perspective.”
“Just from the point of view of the investors, this is a good situation for us,” Niki Futter, the president of Invest Austria, an association that supports private equity and VC investors, told Sifted before the election. He also stressed that the results are not in line with his or Invest Austria’s political views.
“[The FPÖ and the runner-up centre-right People’s Party] don’t want to raise taxes. They want to ease certain things in the economic sphere […] Both right parties are in favour of tax incentives for investors,” he added.
On immigration issues, Andreas Riegler, founder and general partner of the deeptech VC fund APEX, says that “there’s always the hope that even those parties that are pushing against immigration see a difference between controlled legal immigration and other immigration.
“There’s broad recognition that we do need talented people […] that we remain a very attractive location for top talent,” he adds. “There’s obviously always some uncertainty with a new government.”
“What I’m worried about is that climate tech and impact probably won’t be a big priority for the new government; same for increasing gender diversity, as the FPÖ is not necessarily known for caring about these topics,” says Fassl.
Elsewhere in Europe, a similar result in regional elections in neighbouring Germany — where the ultra right-wing Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) came out on top in recent elections in the eastern state of Thuringia, and second in Saxony — rattled startup founders there. Their concerns are that the party plans to curb immigration and seemingly has a lack of interest towards tech and entrepreneurship.
