A taxpayer-funded birthday celebration for former Austrian Interior Minister Ernst Strasser has ignited a political firestorm, drawing sharp criticism from the far-right FPÖ and the liberal NEOS party.
Held on April 29, 2026, at the Interior Ministry in Vienna, the event cost nearly €9,000 of public money. Of the 77 guests invited, 61 attended, including current and former politicians such as Interior Minister Gerhard Karner, Defense Minister Klaudia Tanner, and ex-Chancellors Johanna Mikl-Leitner and Wolfgang Sobotka, according to ORF News.
Strasser, a member of the conservative ÖVP, served as interior minister from 2000 to 2004 before becoming an EU parliamentarian. In 2014, he was sentenced to three years in prison for bribery after undercover journalists posing as lobbyists filmed him promising to influence EU legislation in exchange for €100,000 a year. He served his sentence, including time under house arrest with an electronic ankle monitor, and the legal record is set to be expunged after ten years.
The ministry defended the event as a “representative official gathering” to honour a long-serving department head on his 70th birthday, noting that similar celebrations had been held for predecessors. Guest selection, it said, followed protocol and reflected the ministry’s tradition of acknowledging former leaders.
But opposition lawmakers saw it differently. FPÖ parliamentarian Reinhold Maier called it a scandal, accusing Minister Karner of “throwing a birthday party on taxpayers’ money” while police and the public face budget cuts. NEOS lawmaker Henrike Brandstötter mocked the affair as a “rather expensive resocialisation measure” on social media.
The controversy underscores lingering sensitivities around Strasser’s legacy. Once a rising star in Austrian politics, his career collapsed after the “cash-for-laws” scandal, captured on hidden camera, showed him pledging legislative favours for cash. Now, a lavish official celebration has reopened old wounds—and raised fresh questions about the use of public funds for political homage.derstandard+2
