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Only a few days after the re-election of communist mayor Elke Kahr, Graz has had to impose a budget freeze. New subsidies will not be processed for the time being, and orders are being restricted. The financial emergency immediately presents the new KPÖ-Greens city government with its first major test.

For Elke Kahr, the start of the new term of office could hardly have been more contradictory. After the strong result of the KPÖ in the Graz municipal elections, she was re-elected mayor at the end of August. A few days later, however, the dramatic financial reality becomes apparent: Graz has to turn off the money tap.

On the orders of the finance directorate and finance city councillor Manfred Eber, new subsidies have been stopped for the time being and a general ordering freeze has been imposed. Thereafter, only legally required expenditures and those indispensable for ongoing operations are to be approved. Every order is to be examined individually.

The reason is the city’s strained liquidity situation. Among the immediate additional burdens cited are rising costs for services in the area of disability assistance. According to its own figures, the city has to raise an additional 32 million euros for this.

For associations and other subsidy applicants, the freeze has immediate consequences. New applications will remain pending for the time being, while subsidies already contractually promised are still to be paid out. Nevertheless, the signal is clear: Graz must rein in its spending in order to ensure its solvency.

King Harald V of Norway is dead. The popular monarch died on 28 August 2026 at the age of 89 and leaves a country in deep mourning after more than

35 years on the throne. Harald V had been King of Norway since 1991 and was regarded far beyond the country’s borders as a down-to-earth and approachable head of state.

After his death, his son Haakon automatically succeeded him and became the new monarch of Norway as King Haakon VIII. In parliament, the new king has already taken his oath on the constitution and promised to lead his country with the same sense of connection as his father. Thousands of people laid flowers in front of the Royal Palace in Oslo and said goodbye to their long-serving king with candles and personal messages. The funeral service and burial of King Harald is scheduled for 9 September 2026 in Oslo, at which numerous European royals are expected. With Harald’s death, a defining era of the Norwegian monarchy ends, while a new chapter now begins for King Haakon VIII.

The party congress took place in Haag in Lower Austria on 5 September 2026. August Wöginger was re-elected federal chairman of the ÖAAB with 95.9 percent of the votes. The re-election took place despite his first-instance conviction in connection with the staffing of the Braunau tax office. There was no opposing candidate, and the congress motto “Gu(s)t for the Future” played on Wöginger’s nickname. In his speech, Wöginger emphasised the importance of performance, prosperity, social security and social cohesion. Politically, he also clearly positioned himself against the FPÖ and criticised in particular its relations with the allegedly far-right Identitarians.

The team of deputies also received very high approval rates of more than 98 and 99 percent respectively in the elections. Numerous political guests, including Governor Johanna Mikl-Leitner and Interior Minister Gerhard Karner, attended the federal congress.

With the start of the 2026/27 school year, the headscarf ban for female pupils up to the completed 14th year of life has come into force in Austria. The ban applies at public and private schools to headscarves that cover the head according to Islamic traditions. Instruction and school events outside the school building are not affected. In the event of a first violation, discussions with the pupil and her legal guardians are provided for; in the event of repeated violations, further authorities can be involved. As a last resort, legal guardians face fines of between 150 and 800 euros. While supporters emphasise the protection of the self-determination and development of young girls, critics see it as discrimination against Muslim schoolgirls and an interference with freedom of religion.

Letters to the Editor

A comprehensive drought compensation for farmers is suddenly not possible because there is no money in the budget – what a surprise! Climate policy has bled our budgets dry. Compensation for expected natural disasters is not possible.

With go-it-alone approaches in net-zero policy, we have economically weakened ourselves, achieved nothing against climate change as expected, and can now help the victims less or not at all – in contrast to other countries.

At the latest since it has been clear that China and the USA are not joining in on CO₂ reduction – i.e. since the first Trump administration from 2017 onwards – one’s own targets should have been relativised. Was that done? No!

A real stroke of genius. Who came up with that? Fanatics and special interests!

It is time for a climate-abuse compensation law including a corresponding fund.

Ten years of ecologically induced lagging behind and decline in GDP due to the burdens of anti-climate policy are making themselves felt. Climate change could not be stopped.

Now we have environmental disasters and empty coffers that prevent us from making compensation payments.

Eco-activists who have enriched themselves in recent years and fattened themselves on eco-taxes should have to contribute a third of their financial resources in order to mitigate this misfortune and feed a disaster fund.

Among the people addressed is certainly also August Wöginger, the patron saint of the civil-service tax collectors with career ambitions, who likes to tell critical citizens who are upset about rising living costs and a stagnating economy that he is not really interested in the criticism of people with broken teeth and torn trousers.

August Wöginger remains firmly anchored in the ÖVP even after the – not yet final – conviction for jobbery and is shielded almost unanimously from any calls for resignation. A picture of the times and a clear depiction of the pecking order in the ÖVP: the convicted ÖAAB man continues to have a say, while a master builder like Ruck, who builds this country, is immediately thrown out of the party by federal party chairman Stocker after a secretly recorded joke in the cellar.

No further questions about the continuing downward spiral of this country under this government.

Mr Stocker, you are not succeeding, even if you may have the best intentions, in bringing your party onto a line that does not harm this country. 

Resign immediately and take your inventress, Johanna Morgana, the Last of Lower Austria, with you – a governor who, despite an almost ten-year catastrophe record, is blessed with a short-sighted but good-looking Freedom Party deputy. He obligingly and purposefully supports her patriotic image-correction campaigns under the title “Fight against Radicalism”, that is to say with the appropriate blinkers in favour of a certain state-undermining party.

Fundamental rights are indivisible. They are the foundation of the modern state as a place of shared freedom.

Therefore, no group may be singled out and made the object of state educational measures in the spirit of expedient utilisation and instrumentalisation intentions. This also applies to Muslim fellow citizens, who must be free, within the framework of parental educational rights, to send their children to school with or without a headscarf.

The new headscarf ban for girls up to 14 contradicts this idea.

With this demand, the ÖVP protects nothing at all, least of all our traditions. Rather, it undermines our liberal tradition under the pretext that the “barbarians” are now at the door – incidentally those alleged barbarians whom pseudo-conservative banking, NGO and real-estate interests have funnelled into the country out of their own advantage considerations.

It is these interests that, with their policy of malicious indebtedness and creeping expropriation, have put such pressure on their own middle classes that they have stopped reproducing adequately. Anyone who wants to put a stop to this strategy of attrition and replacement must reject system-prolonging measures of forced collectivisation already out of a well-understood self-interest.

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