Austria’s revamped security leadership team tackles challenges

THE CONTROVERSIES THAT CONTINUE to be associated with the Austrian intelligence agencies today took place before December 2021, when the current Directorate of State Security and Intelligence (Direktion Staatsschutz und Nachrichtendienst, or DSN) was founded. Despite this, the DSN under the leadership of its director Omar Haijawi-Pirchner is still regarded as stable and predictable.

The DSN’s Western partner agencies were more than happy that the new governing coalition in Vienna was able to prevent the rightwing populist and generally Putin-friendly Freedom Party of Austria (FPÖ) from providing the minister of the interior. The fact that the current Interior Minister Gerhard Karner has been joined by an experienced state secretary is a major plus: Jörg Leichtfried, a Social Democrat born in 1967, has been regarded as a liberal European for many years, including eleven years as a member of the European Parliament. He will be responsible for state security and intelligence agencies.

One of Leichtfried’s stated goals has been particularly well received: he has vowed to improve the country’s national infrastructure and intensify its international cooperation. Various other details, such as the future framework conditions for military intelligence agencies, are also on his list. It is certain that the operational work of the DSN will continue to be led by Haijawi-Pirchner. This is reportedly to be improved, with better monitoring of terrorist threats, made possible by the planned extended access to messenger services.

The Austrian intelligence agencies have always been characterized by the personalities of their individua leaders. It is therefore all the more important who the leadership surrounds itself with—especially as the expectations are high, not least due to the threats from Russia and China. The uncertainty regarding Europe’s partners in the United States also means that the European intelligence agencies are urgently dependent on reliable Austrian partners.

As the political-strategic organization will be the responsibility of Leichtfried, two people who work in his immediate environment, and were previously only known to insiders, have come to the fore: the head of the Cabinet, Christian Strnad, and the head of Strategy and Security Policy, Rastislav Bachora. Both previously worked on the security-policy concept of the Social Democratic Party of Austria (SPÖ), the Social Democratic Strategy for Freedom, Protection and Security. Read more of this post