On October 26, 1955, the Austrian parliament adopted a constitutional law by which the country declared itself permanently neutral, and it undertook not to join any military alliance and not to allow foreign bases on its soil. The law came less than five months after the state treaty had been signed in Vienna, which restored the country as a sovereign state and ended the occupation by the Soviet Union, the United States, Britain and France that had lasted ten years after 1945. The four powers signed the treaty in May 1955.
The neutrality was part of the bargain. The Soviet Union had been unwilling to give up its zone of occupation unless the country stayed out of the western alliance, and the Austrian government offered a declaration of neutrality as the price of the treaty, and the western powers accepted it. Under the law, Austria does not join alliances and does not permit foreign troops, and it also undertakes to defend its neutrality if it is attacked, and the arrangement has been kept by every government since. The bargain held.
Vienna became a site for negotiations. The city was busy. It was chosen for the summit between President Kennedy and Nikita Khrushchev in 1961 and for the early rounds of the talks between the United States and the Soviet Union on limiting strategic arms, which began in 1969, and it is the seat of a number of international bodies, including one of the United Nations offices and the headquarters of the International Atomic Energy Agency and of OPEC, and the diplomatic quarter in the city grew up around them.
Austria joined the European Union in 1995 and the Schengen arrangements later, and it has taken part in peacekeeping missions of the United Nations and in a common European security policy, while keeping out of NATO, which has been the consistent reading of the neutrality law. The rule stands. October 26 is a national day, and the date is marked each year with ceremonies and with the opening of government buildings.