GENEVA

Austria witnessed a sharp rise in right-wing extremist crimes last year, according to a response to a question from Interior Minister Gerhard Karner to the Social Democratic Party (SPO) in parliament. 

The party said there were 1,208 such crimes in 2023, Austrian public broadcaster ORF reported Tuesday.

In 2022, there were 928 right-wing extremist crimes, said the party.

Sabine Schatz, a member of parliament from the SPO, has been asking the Ministry of Justice and Ministry of Interior about right-wing extremist, racist and anti-Semitic crimes every year since 2018 because these figures are not specifically mentioned in reports by Austrian domestic intelligence.

At 1,208, the figure for 2023 is the highest since 2018.

"The federal government has failed to take proper measures against this anti-democratic ideology," Schatz wrote in a press release.

She called for "a national action plan against right-wing extremism."

Austria's first report on right-wing extremism is not due until the fall. The Documentation Archive of the Austrian Resistance (DOW) was commissioned by the Ministry of the Interior to compile it. It will cover the years 2020 to 2023.

Schatz said she hopes the report will "provide a detailed database and assessment of the situation."

Parliamentary elections will be held in Austria this fall. According to the latest polls by various survey institutes, the xenophobic, far-right Freedom Party of Austria (FPO) will be the strongest force in the next parliament.