The right-wing Austrian Freedom Party (FPÖ) and the left-wing Greens Party are teaming up to thwart the government coalition’s plans for extended surveillance of electronic messenger services – such as WhatsApp and Signal – using spy software.
Today, both parties announced they were filing a so-called “one-third complaint” (“Drittelbeschwerde”) with the Austrian Constitutional Court.
This legal instrument allows Austrian MPs to ask the Constitutional Court to annul a law if at least one third of the 183 elected legislators (61 MPs) sign on to the complaint. The FPÖ – which came in first in the 2024 general elections – has 57 MPs, the Greens have 16.
In the complaint, the parties warn that the “technically powerful tool bears an enormous potential for misuse” and constituted a disproportionate infringement on Austrians’ fundamental rights.
FPÖ general secretary Christian Hafenecker said: “The messenger surveillance decided by this coalition of losers is nothing less than a massive attack on the fundamental rights and freedoms of our population and, in our view, therefore also unconstitutional.
“We already voted against this citizen surveillance law in parliament last year and announced further resistance to it.
“This constitutional complaint is therefore the next logical step and a democratic act of self-defence in the interests of the fundamental rights of Austrians,” he said.
Greens Party representative Alma Zadic said: “The state has a duty to protect its citizens, not to secretly invade their most intimate digital lives. Those who exploit security gaps for surveillance purposes recklessly jeopardise the privacy of the population and the security of state infrastructure.
“We demand a return to clear principles of the rule of law and the protection of our fundamental freedoms.”
In July 2025, the ruling parties – the Austrian People’s Party (ÖVP), the Social Democratic Party (SPÖ), and the small liberal Neos Party – had voted in favour of a law allowing the Austrian intelligence agency DSN to monitor suspects’ electronic communication using spy software and exploiting security loopholes.
The messenger surveillance law is a longtime wish of the ÖVP and its interior minister Gerhard Karner.
In summer 2025, Karner demanded that the surveillance tool should not only be approved for use by the DSN to ward off terrorism and threats to the state but also by prosecutors’ offices in the course of regular criminal investigations.
The use of state-sanctioned spy software is on the rise throughout Europe.
In Germany, a 2021 law allowed all 19 state security agencies to use such software tools in their investigations. In September 2025, the German Constitutional Court threw out a complaint by a citizens’ rights organisation against the law.
