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Alliance for the Future of Austria (BZO)

Alliance for the Future of Austria (BZO) was formed in 2005 by the office-seeking wing of the FPO led by Joerg Haider. At an 04 April 2005 press conference, the entire Freedom Party (FPO) national leadership announced it was quitting the FPO to found a new movement. The "Alliance for the Future of Austria" (Buendnis Zukunft Oesterreichs - BZO) had Carinthian Governor Joerg Haider as chairman. The announcement follows weeks of internal party rivalry between Haider's followers and the FPO's right wing under the leadership of Vienna state chairman Heinz-Christian Strache. They argued that the break had become necessary due to "destructive forces" active in the FPO.

They have chos orange as their identifying color, replacing FPO blue. Vice-Chancellor Hubert Gorbach stressed that all FPO government members "fully support the new course." Scheibner noted that there was a "clear intention" among FPO Members of Parliament to continue participation in the government. He said he could "guarantee a majority for the government in parliament."

The founding of the BZO caught the FPO rank-and-file by surprise. The heads of the Vienna, Tyrolean, Burgenland and Salzburg state chapters said they wanted to remain with the "old" FPO. The Carinthian and Upper Austrian chapters declared solidarity with the BZO. Others have taken a wait-and-see position. There will be bitter battles ahead between the FPO and BZO on financial issues. Outgoing FPO Secretary General Uwe Scheuch noted that the FPO would retain federal party subsidies, as well as the party think tank. However, he noted that the old FPO would also retain responsibility for the FPO's debts, which amount to at least 3.2 million Euro.

The re-minted BZO, with the support of the former FPO MPs, is in a position to guarantee the continuation of the coalition until fall 2006, when regular elections are due. However, it remained questionable whether Haider can turn the BZO into an attractive movement centered on his personality. His charisma had faded significantly since his glory days in the 1990s. The new color scheme of Haider's following may not appear serious to many voters. In any case, the long term political fortunes of both the BZO and the FPO looked shaky at best, with financial and electoral deficits in both camps.

The new party struggled to compete against its more radical former party, failing to compete in a string of state elections and only barely making it into the national parliament in 2006. The party performed stronger in 2008, however, winning 10.7% of the vote. Together with the FPO, the Austrian far-right took 28.2%, surpassing the FPO’s record of 26.9%. Shortly after the 2008 election Haider was killed in a car crash.

The new party leader was Josef Bucher, who tried to morph BZO into a more typically conservative party, attempting to carve out a space in the spectrum between the FPO and OVP where it could form coalitions with the latter party. Bucher tried to re-brand the BZO by avoiding harsh, FPO-style anti-immigrant rhetoric and adopting a less socially conservative, more economically "liberal" (limited government, pro-free market) platform.

This backfired when the party’s backbone,the Carinthian wing, defected en masse to the FPO. Members of the Alliance for the Future of Austria's (BZO) Carinthia branch voted overwhelmingly 17 January 2010 to join the Freedom Party (FPO) in a national alliance, modeled on the CDU-CSU alliance in Germany, with the Carinthian party called the Freedom Party of Carinthia (FPK). This came despite recent charges of corruption and mismanagement against the leading proponent of the accord. Some BZO leaders opposed the alliance plan and now hope to keep the party going at the national level, but it is unlikely to survive in the long-run without control of its former stronghold of Carinthia. The FPO was hoping to get a political boost from the merger, but had instead been tarnished by scandals in Carinthia.

From that point on, BZO was essentially a dead party. The party gained a single MEP when the Lisbon Treaty redistribution came in, but their MEP was ejected from the party after criticising the party’s 2013 campaign. The party lost all its seats in the 2013 election. BZO chose Ulrike Haider-Querica, daughter of the late prolific politician Joerg Haider, to represent them at the European elections in May 2014. It is exceptionally unlikely that BZO will have any impact on the European elections. The party is not currently a member of any European political party. In the unlikely event it did gain seats it could be a candidate to join the Europe of Freedom and Democracy or the European Conservatives and Reformists.