ABSTRACT
This chapter deals with the motivations, attitudes, reactions, and consequences of the political and state representatives of the fourteen European Union (EU) member states toward the emerging and completed formation of an OVP - FPO government in February 2000. Austria's assumption of the EU presidency in the second half of 1998 demonstrated its capability of taking on this new role and, with it, the responsibility for community policy. Even if the EU "sanctions" against Austria appear to be unique, acting under "foreign orders" is nothing new in Austria's foreign policy history. With respect to foreign policy, Joschka Fischer recognized Germany's historical responsibility towards the Nazi-period. The EU 14 considered Haider's repeated debonair statements about the Nazi past as highly problematical. As pedagogically grounded and justified as the "preventive hammer blow" might have appeared the "sanction" measures, which were instituted on a national basis because they were bilateral, appeared anachronistic, if not ridiculous.
