The Viennese municipal council election not only gives the Neos a coalition with the SPÖ in the federal capital and thus a premiere. For the first time, a representative of the Neos is moving into the Federal Council at the same time, and in view of the changed majorities in the chamber of states plays an absolutely key role there. If there is a 30:30 tie between turquoise-green and red-blue, the Austro-Irish Viennese lawyer Karl-Arthur Arlamovsky will tip the scales on whether laws will be approved or rejected in the Federal Council. Since the Neos general meeting on Tuesday evening, at which the approval for the red and pink city government in Vienna was given, the lawyer has been confirmed as a pink newcomer to the Federal Council.
Arlamovsky (48) is no stranger to the Neos, but a fellow campaigner who has served for several years. The lawyer is one of the founding members of the new party, launched in 2012 by Matthias Strolz from Vorarlberg, which made it straight to the top in the 2013 National Council election. Since then he has been a kind of legal companion to the Pink Party and the Neos Parliamentary Club on legal issues.
That is why the new Viennese Vice Mayor and Neos regional party leader Christoph Wiederkehr praises him as “an absolute expert who will now be sent to the regional chamber for the first time. The newcomer to the regional chamber has stressed in a broadcast that the rule of law will be in the foreground of his future political activities in the Federal Council stand.
Arlamovsky made his first political steps in 1994 while studying law in Vienna in the student council, and in the ÖVP-related action group he worked as an education officer. The European perspective, which is important to the Neos, has been a concern of his since the second half of the 1990s in a working group of European Democratic Students.
Neos representative in the federal electoral authority
The father of a daughter and a son has been the legal arm of Neos since it was founded. Logically, he also represented the pink party in the federal electoral authority and was involved in the extended board of Neos. He is arguable: as early as 2013, the “Wiener Zeitung” portrayed him as one of the “angry men in pink”. At that time he brought the Viennese referendum to the parking lot with an action before the Constitutional Court. Most recently, he brought his legal expertise to bear in connection with the abundance of laws and ordinances of the federal government in the fight against the corona epidemic. He explained on social media that the arms business was open despite the closure of all shops: “The arms trade is not part of the trade.”
The pink newcomer to the Chamber of States of the House will need a sure instinct and legal knowledge. For a solo member of a party in a political representation, he has an extraordinary amount of power in this republic. In an emergency, with a 30:30 equilibrium between the representatives of the ÖVP and the Greens in the Federal Council and the opposition mandatars of the SPÖ and FPÖ, he will decide whether a law receives a majority or is rejected and thus a persistence decision by turquoise-green becomes necessary in the National Council, which in any case entails a delay.
After the Viennese election, in which the FPÖ in particular was cut down, the distribution of seats in the Federal Council looks like this: ÖVP 25, SPÖ 21, FPÖ 9, Greens 5, Neos 1. According to the election calendar, this balance of power in the state chamber is up to Do not change anything about the Upper Austrian state election in autumn 2021 – and help Neos newcomer Arlamovsky to a key role.
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