page_title: Communist Party of Austria
section_title: Financial situation
hierarchical_section_title: Communist Party of Austria / History / After the fall of the Socialist Bloc / Financial situation
caption_attribution_description: Deutsch: Transparent bei einer Demonstration für das Ernst Kirchweger Haus - EKH in Wien English: Picture of a transparent - fotographed at a public action to keep the squatted house Ernst Kirchweger Haus - EKH autonomous.
context_page_description: The Communist Party of Austria is a communist party in Austria. Established in 1918 as the Communist Party of German-Austria, it is one of the world's oldest Communist parties. The KPÖ was banned between 1933 and 1945 under both the Austrofascist regime and the Nazi German control of Austria after the 1938 Anschluss. It played an important role in the Austrian resistance against the Nazis.
  The party currently holds two seats in the Styrian Landtag, but has not had representation in the National Council since 1959. At the legislative election held on 29 September 2019, it won only 0.7% of the votes, well below the 4% minimum to obtain seats in the National Council.
  It is part of the New European Left Forum and the Party of the European Left.
context_section_description: After the collapse of the German Democratic Republic in 1989, there were long court-proceedings for many years concerning the considerable net assets of the company Novum. Although the company was an East German one, it was used to siphon money and finance the KPÖ, see also Rudolfine Steindling for further details. The company used to be able to make large amounts of money through GDR foreign trade and the protection of the East German Socialist Unity Party (SED), with the profits used almost exclusively to support the KPÖ. As the successor state, the Federal Republic of Germany laid claim to all the finances of Novum, which was hotly contested by the KPÖ. The German courts decided in 2002, that the former SED-company belonged to the state-assets of the GDR, hence to its successor state the unified Germany. Therefore, these net assets of the KPÖ were confiscated.
  Due to the court decision over the Novum holding, the party lost over 250 million euros of its financial assets. The party saw no alternative but to fire all its employees and stop the production of its weekly newspaper Volksstimme ("Voice of the people", later restarted as Volksstimmen.) The continuing existence of the party depends largely on volunteer work of dedicated communists and sympathisers.
  Because of the financial problems, the party had to sell the so-called Ernst-Kirchweger-Haus (EKH), which was occupied by the so-called Autonome (autonomous) activists since 1990. The sale led to substantial criticism from leftists within and outside Austria, being condemned as "capitalistic". Critics accused the KPÖ of not having exhausted all possibilities to avoid the sale. The accusation that the private buyer was a right-wing extremist could, however, not be substantiated.
  In January 2005 there were several acts of vandalism against cars and private dwellings of KPÖ functionaries as well as the house of the KPÖ chairman. According to media reports the perpetrators outed themselves through the graffiti as EKH sympathisers. The KPÖ defended itself by arguing it had no possible financial means to keep the house. Previously in 2003 the party tried to convince the city of Vienna to buy the building to save it from privatisation; however, city authorities did not respond.
caption: Transparency of an "EKH-bleibt-Aktion" (Ernst-Kirchweger-House-remains action)
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