Bundeskanzleramt | |
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Agency overview | |
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Formed | 1742 (as building) 1920 (as agency) |
Jurisdiction | Government of Austria |
Status | Ministry and venue for cabinet sessions |
Headquarters | Ballhausplatz 2 Innere Stadt, Vienna |
Annual budget | €311 million (2019) [1] |
Chancellor responsible | |
Agency executives |
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Website | www |
The Federal Chancellery of Austria (German : Bundeskanzleramt, abbreviated BKA; historically also Hofkanzlei [2] [3] and Staatskanzlei [4] [5] ) is the ministry led by the chancellor of Austria. [6] [7] [8] [9] Since the establishment of the First Austrian Republic in 1918, the Chancellery building has served as the venue for the sessions of the Austrian cabinet. It is located on the Ballhausplatz in the centre of Vienna, vis-à-vis the Hofburg Imperial Palace. Like Downing Street, Quai d'Orsay or – formerly – Wilhelmstrasse, the address has become a synecdoche for governmental power.
The chancellery's primary function is to align the policies and public relations of the Federal Government. It represents the executive on federal level in matters of the Constitution of Austria and in international courts.
It is also in charge of women's rights and gender equality, civil service, public administration and management, exercised by Ines Stilling in the rank of a Federal Minister and member of the Austrian cabinet.[ needs update ] It is further responsible for national security – if not in the Federal Ministry of the Interior's area of competence –, information privacy and information society, mass media affairs, news conferences and photojournalism, OECD relations, bioethics, and minority rights.
Next to Hofburg Palace, residence of the Holy Roman Emperors and Habsburg Monarchs, the Baroque chancellery building designed by the Genoese architect Johann Lukas von Hildebrandt for chancellor Friedrich Karl von Schönborn was inaugurated in 1719 as Geheime Hofkanzlei, concerned with the foreign policy of Emperor Charles VI. From 1753 until 1792 Prince Wenzel Anton of Kaunitz-Rietberg resided here as State Chancellor of Empress Maria Theresa, Emperor Joseph II and Emperor Leopold II. In the 1760s, Kaunitz had the building significantly enlarged according to plans by Nicolò Pacassi. While Napoleon's troops occupied Vienna, Prince Klemens von Metternich was appointed Foreign Minister of the Austrian Empire in 1809 and moved into the chancellery building with his family to live here during the winter months. In 1814/15 his residence served as venue of the Vienna Congress. After the 1848 revolutions, Minister-President Prince Felix of Schwarzenberg took his seat at the chancellery and made it the centre of his rule.
Until the dissolution of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy in 1918, the building was the seat of the k.u.k. Minister of Foreign Affairs, from 1867 also Chairmen of the Ministers' Council for Common Affairs arbitrating between the Cisleithanian (Austrian) and Transleithanian (Hungarian) minister-presidents. During the July Crisis of 1914, the declaration of war against Serbia was prepared here at the behest of Minister Count Leopold Berchtold. On 30 October 1918 the German-speaking deputies of the Cisleithanian Imperial Council convened as a provisional National Assembly of German Austria to elect a Staatsrat government headed by Chancellor Karl Renner. According to the 1920 Constitution of Austria (Bundes-Verfassungsgesetz, B-VG) authored by Hans Kelsen, the office of the Austrian chancellor was established, with his residence on Ballhausplatz. Several chancellors of the Austrian First Republic also served as Foreign Ministers, a separate Federal Ministry for Foreign Affairs was not established until 1959 under Minister Bruno Kreisky. Until 1946 the building also housed the office of the Austrian Federal President.
On 25 July 1934 Chancellor Engelbert Dollfuss was shot here by Nazi insurgents during the July Putsch. Upon the Austrian Anschluss to Nazi Germany and the resignation of President Wilhelm Miklas on 13 March 1938, Arthur Seyss-Inquart resided on Ballhausplatz as a Reichsstatthalter and head of the Ostmark state government, which was abolished by order of Adolf Hitler on 30 April 1939. Until the end of World War II, the building was used as the seat of the local Reichsgau Wien administration under Josef Bürckel and Baldur von Schirach. Heavily damaged by Allied bombing, the chancellery building was recaptured by the provisional Austrian state government under Karl Renner with consent of the Soviet military authority in Allied-occupied Austria on 27 April 1945. Upon the Austrian legislative election of 1945, the National Council parliament elected Leopold Figl the first post-war chancellor on December 20. The chancellery building was restored until 1950.
![]() | This section needs to be updated.(October 2019) |
The organization has changed by every governing period in Austria since 1970. The Chancellor Sebastian Kurz is currently (2020: Second Kurz government) assisted by two Chancellary ministers within the Federal Chancellery, managing the agency's presently (2020) six departments (Sektionen) as follows:
The chancellor of Austria, officially the federal chancellor the Republic of Austria, is the head of government of the Republic of Austria.
The president of Austria is the head of state of the Republic of Austria.
Ernst Streeruwitz was an Austrian military officer, businessman, political scientist and politician. A member of the industrialist wing of the Christian Social Party, Streeruwitz served on the National Council from November 1923 to October 1930 and as chancellor and foreign minister from May to September 1929.
The Hofburg is the former principal imperial palace of the Habsburg dynasty in Austria. Located in the centre of Vienna, it was built in the 13th century and expanded several times afterwards. It also served as the imperial winter residence, as Schönbrunn Palace was the summer residence. Since 1946, it is the official residence and workplace of the president of Austria.
The Minoritenplatz is one of the oldest public squares in Vienna. It is located in the first district Innere Stadt, and is dominated by the Minoritenkirche church, after which the square is named. The church itself was constructed by the Greyfriars (Minoriten), after the Austrian Duke Leopold VI of Austria invited them to Austria in 1224. Since the square is in direct proximity to the Hofburg Imperial Palace, a number of aristocratic families took up residence in the square from the 16th to the 18th century.
Ballhausplatz is a square in central Vienna containing the building that for over two hundred years has been the official residence of the most senior Austrian Cabinet Minister, the State Chancellor, today the Chancellor of Austria. As a result, Ballhausplatz is often used as shorthand for the Austrian Federal Chancellery. Until 1918 the Foreign Ministry of Austria-Hungary was also housed here. Similar to Downing Street or the Hotel Matignon, the word Ballhausplatz is a synecdoche for the seat of power.
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs is the government ministry of Austria responsible for diplomatic missions and immigration, the administration of foreign policy, and the maintenance of the country's relations with international organisations, especially the European Union. It oversees the Austrian embassies, consular representatives and other emissaries, and administers the naturalisation process and handles citizenship questions along with the Interior Ministry.
The judiciary of Austria is the system of courts, prosecution and correction of the Republic of Austria as well as the branch of government responsible for upholding the rule of law and administering justice. The judiciary is independent of the other two branches of government and is committed to guaranteeing fair trials and equality before the law. It has broad and effective powers of judicial review.
The Constitutional Court in Austria is the tribunal responsible for judicial review.
The Imperial and Royal Foreign Ministry was the ministry responsible for the foreign relations of the Austro-Hungarian Empire from the formation of the Dual Monarchy in 1867 until it was dissolved in 1918.
The Supreme Court of Justice is the final court of appeal of Austria in civil and criminal matters. Along with the Supreme Administrative Court and the Constitutional Court, it is one of Austria's three apex courts.
The House of Lords was the upper house of the Imperial Council, the bicameral legislature of the Austrian Empire from 1861 and of the Cisleithanian (Austrian) half of Austria-Hungary upon the Compromise of 1867. Created by the February Patent issued by Emperor Franz Joseph I on 26 February 1861, it existed until the end of World War I and the dissolution of the Dual Monarchy, when on 12 November 1918 the transitional National Assembly of German-Austria declared it abolished. It was superseded by the Federal Council of the Austrian Parliament implemented by the 1920 Federal Constitutional Law.
The Federal Constitutional Law is a federal constitutional law in Austria serving as the centerpiece of the Constitution. It establishes Austria as a democratic federal parliamentary republic.
The December Constitution is a set of six acts that served as the constitution of the Cisleithanian half of Austria-Hungary. The acts were proclaimed by Emperor Franz Joseph on 21 December 1867 and functioned as the supreme law of the land until the collapse of the empire in 1918. Five of the Constitution's acts were replaced by the Federal Constitutional Law between 1918 and 1920; the sixth law, a bill of rights, is still in force.
The European and Austrian constitutions endow the Austrian court system with broad powers of judicial review. All Austrian courts are charged with verifying that the statutes and ordinances they are about to apply conform to European Union law, and to refuse to apply them if not. A specialized Constitutional Court checks statutes for compliance with the Austrian constitution and executive ordinances for compliance with Austrian law in general.
In the Republic of Austria, the Supreme Administrative Court is the appellate court to which appeals may be made from the decisions of the country's eleven administrative trial courts. The Supreme Administrative Court also resolves demarcation disputes within the administrative court system and hears complaints about administrative trial courts that fail to issue verdicts legally required of them in a timely manner.
In Austrian politics, the Streeruwitz government was a short-lived right-of-center coalition government led by Ernst Streeruwitz, in office from May 4, 1929 to September 26, 1929. The coalition consisted of the Christian Social Party, the Greater German People's Party, and the Landbund. Although its majority in the National Council was narrow, it was a broad alliance sociologically; the coalition represented much of the middle class as well as most of the agricultural sector, along with banking and industrial interests. Its main opponents were the Social Democratic Party to the left and the extra-parliamentary Heimwehr movement to the right.
In Austria, a minister is a member of the Cabinet that usually leads a ministry or a division of the Chancellery.
The Presidential Chancellery of Austria is an institution that assists the President with fulfilling his tasks as head of state. It is headquartered in the Leopoldine Wing of the Hofburg. The Chancellery is divided into several groups: group European and international affairs, protocol and organisation, group legal, social and administrative affairs and the group domestic affairs and adjutant's office of the President.
In Austrian constitutional law, a supreme executive organ , is an elected official, political appointee, or collegiate body with ultimate responsibility for a certain class of administrative decisions – either decisions in some specific area of public administration or decisions of some specific type. The president, for example, is the supreme executive organ with regards to appointing judges; the minister of justice is the supreme executive organ with regards to running the prosecution service; the president of the Constitutional Court is the supreme executive organ with regards to the operational management of the Constitutional Court. The Constitutional Court itself, on the other hand, is not a supreme organ because its decisions, while definitive, are judicial and not administrative in nature.