Politics of Austria in the context of Second Kurz government

Vienna (/viˈɛnə/ vee-EN-ə; German: Wien [viːn] ; Austro-Bavarian: Wean [veɐ̯n]) is the capital, most populous city, and one of the nine states of Austria. It is Austria's primate city, with just over two million inhabitants. Its larger metropolitan area has a population of nearly 2.9 million, representing nearly one-third of the country's population. Vienna is the cultural, economic, and political center of the country, the fifth-largest city by population in the European Union, and the most populous of the cities on the river Danube.

The city lies on the eastern edge of the Vienna Woods (Wienerwald), the northeasternmost foothills of the Alps, that separate Vienna from the more western parts of Austria, at the transition to the Pannonian Basin. It sits on the Danube, and is traversed by the highly regulated Wienfluss (Vienna River). Vienna is completely surrounded by Lower Austria, and lies around 50 km (31 mi) west of Slovakia and its capital Bratislava, 50 km (31 mi) northwest of Hungary, and 60 km (37 mi) south of Moravia (Czech Republic).

The Austrian State Treaty (German: Österreichischer Staatsvertrag [ˈøːstɐraɪçɪʃɐ ˈʃtaːtsfɐˌtraːɡ] ) or Austrian Independence Treaty established Austria as a sovereign state. It was signed on 15 May 1955 in Vienna, at the Schloss Belvedere among the Allied occupying powers (France, the United Kingdom, the United States, and the Soviet Union) and the Austrian government. The neighbouring Federal People's Republic of Yugoslavia acceded to the treaty subsequently. It officially came into force on 27 July 1955.

Its full title is "Treaty for the re-establishment of an independent and democratic Austria, signed in Vienna on 15 May 1955" (German: Staatsvertrag betreffend die Wiederherstellung eines unabhängigen und demokratischen Österreich, unterzeichnet in Wien am 15. Mai).

The National Council (Austrian German: Nationalrat, pronounced [nat͡si̯oˈnaːlˌʁaːt] ) is one of the two houses of the Austrian Parliament and is frequently referred to as the lower house. The constitution endows the National Council with far more power than the Federal Council.

In Austrian politics, a statutory city (German: Stadt mit eigenem Statut or Statutarstadt [ʃtatuˈtaːɐ̯ˌʃtat] ), also known in Burgenland as free city (German: Freistadt), is a city that is vested, in addition to its purview as a municipality, with the powers and duties of a district administrative authority. The city administration thus functions as both a municipal government and a branch of the executive arm of the national government. A resident of a statutory city would, for example, contact a city office and interact with city employees to apply for a driver's license or a passport.

As of 2022, there are 15 statutory cities. Statutory cities are mostly major regional population centers with residents numbering in the tens of thousands. The median statutory city has a population of about sixty thousand.