Austrian coalition negotiators have indicated the country would leave the European Sky Shield Initiative (ESSI) once the new right-wing government takes office.
On January 21, Klaudia Tanner – Austria’s Conservative Defence Minister since 2020 – said that the Sky Shield membership was not an indispensable condition for her party to enter into a coalition with the Freedom Party (FPÖ).
Sky Shield is a project by 21 European countries to build an integrated ground-based air defence system with the capability to shoot down incoming ballistic missiles. It was founded in August 2022 by Germany as a response to Russian missile strikes on Ukraine after its invasion.
In October 2022, 15 more countries joined the initiative – primarily from Scandinavia and Eastern Europe but also the UK.
Under Sky Shield, member states will jointly acquire air defence systems, including the Skyranger and IRIS-T systems produced by German defence contractor Rheinmetall.
The FPÖ is fundamentally opposed to Austria’s ESSI membership. Tanner is the chief negotiator for defence issues for the Conservative People’s Party (ÖVP) in the current coalition talks and was instrumental in Austria’s accession to the initiative in 2023.
The FPÖ has long criticised Austria’s accession to the Sky Shield initiative on cost grounds. The necessary contributions amount to €6 billion – a large chunk of the €16 billion budget the Austrian military has for investments until 2032.
Austria is currently in the throes of a budgetary crisis after it turned out that the outgoing ÖVP-Greens government had covered up the true extent of the country’s federal budget deficit ahead of the September elections.
In January 2025, FPÖ and ÖVP agreed on a number of spending cuts to avoid a European Union deficit procedure.
Another concern was whether the joint air defence initiative conflicted with Austria’s neutrality.
When Austria regained its independence in 1955, a constitutional clause was adopted that the country declared its “everlasting neutrality”. It has remained neutral ever since and is, for example, not a member of NATO.
Most legal experts have agreed that ESSI did not conflict with that neutrality, as it primarily amounted to a joint procurement and did not contain an assistance clause to aid other member states in event of an attack.
FPÖ leader Herbert Kickl, on the other hand, has called joining Sky Shield a “catastrophic decision” with regards to neutrality as well as being an “accession to NATO through the back door”.
Kickl said joining it might even lead Austria to war with Russia.
If Austria left Sky Shield – as all commentators have expected following Tanner’s remarks – the question remained how the country would defend its airspace.
If Austria bought missile defence systems on its own, the price would probably be higher.
In the end Austria may end up without suitable missile defence systems. That would not be an unusual situation.
The country’s army is notoriously underfunded, with the Austrian air force, for example, recently having to leave the country’s airspace undefended for days due to lack of personnel.
