Austria’s Liberal Neos party said Veit Dengler, their speaker for foreign policy, is to assume new responsibilities.
In future, the MP will be the party’s speaker for research, apprenticeship, start-ups and Austrians living abroad.
While the party presented the move as part of a wider re-shuffling of responsibilities, Dengler was in practice demoted. That was due to his support for Austria joining NATO, according to a report by local newspaper Die Presse.
In an interview with German newspaper Berliner Zeitung published on November 13, Dengler had expressly suggested that his country should join the defence alliance.
“Austria should join NATO. If you believe a small, interconnected country could maintain prosperity and security without a protective community you are confusing wishful thinking with strategy,” he told the paper.
“When faced with a threat, small states have two possible courses of action: Make themselves small and hope to be overlooked or join a credible deterrent alliance,” he added.
“NATO is the only defence alliance that has been functioning for many decades. And membership also means sitting at the table and having a say in decisions, rather than being dragged along as a passenger.”
Dengler also criticised Austrian policymakers, accusing political leadership of avoiding a security policy debate.
He reportedly did not find favour with Beate Meinl-Reisinger, leader of the Neos and Austria’s foreign minister.
Meinl-Reisinger has repeatedly stated that Austria should stick to its constitutional neutrality. During her first foreign visit in Brussels in March 2025, she told reporters: “For us, the neutrality demanded by the Constitution clearly applies.”
According to its programme, Neos does not support Austrian accession to NATO. Instead, the party prefers a “European defence union”, which could “defend the continent without the US”.
While Neos supporters criticised Dengler’s demotion on social media, Austria’s main opposition party, the right-wing Austrian Freedom Party, was ridiculing the “chaos days at the pink mini-government party”.
In a press release, the right-wingers’ foreign policy speaker Susanne Fürst said: “Hardly any other party talks so loudly about security policy ‘reforms’ while internally no one knows what course they are actually pursuing.
“For years, they have been flirting with NATO membership and the abolition of neutrality, then again with an EU defence union and an EU army, and now a prominent party founder declares that NATO is already the de facto EU army anyway,” she said.
“This is a declaration of leadership failure and a lack of credibility on the part of this party.”
Brussels Signal contacted Veit Dengler and Neos but had not heard back at the time of writing.
Dengler was one of the founders of Neos in 2012. Before becoming an MP in 2024 he worked in various management roles and as a freelance consultant.
Neos joined the Austrian coalition government in February 2025. Since then, the party has repeatedly been accused by former supporters of selling out its libertarian values in favour of high-ranking government positions for Meinl-Reisinger and her ilk.
