JUNOS - Young Liberal Students
JUNOS - Young Liberal Students are an Austria-wide liberal student organization and parliamentary group in the Austrian Students' Union (ÖH). JUNOS students emerge from the former union group JuLis - Young Liberals Austria and are a branch of JUNOS - Young Liberal NEOS .
JUNOS students currently hold six of 55 mandates in the federal representation of the ÖH , as well as 37 mandates at 18 Austrian universities.
Board
The current board of the student organization was elected in Vienna on June 15, 2019 and consists of:
- Stephen Slager (Chairman)
- Andrea Leirouz (Deputy Chairwoman; Board Member for Site Coordination)
- Alexander Scheidl (Management)
- Adam Klokočka (Board Member for Programs and Campaigns)
- Sophie Wotschke (board member for events)
- Anna Stürgkh (Federal Chairwoman of JUNOS - Young Liberal NEOS)
Content orientation
JUNOS students represent a liberal university policy. Their main demands include downstream, dedicated tuition fees, fair access restrictions and an expansion of merit and social grants. JUNOS students are in favor of an end to the mandatory membership of students in the ÖH and the abolition of the general political mandate of the ÖH.
history
The Young Liberals were founded under the name of the Liberal Student Forum at the same time as the Liberal Forum in 1993, after the Liberal Forum had split off from the latter under Jörg Haider due to the increasingly right-wing populist line of the FPÖ. After the LSF ran for students in the 1993 ÖH elections in an election platform with the United Green Austria members belonging to the moderate wing, it stood alone for the first time in 1995 and achieved 8.8 percent of the vote. By 1997 it was able to increase to over 10 percent. However, from 1999 the election results of the LSF fell continuously, partly because of the departure of the Liberal Forum from parliament. In the 2007 ÖH election, the LSF lost all mandates to university representatives and was overtaken in terms of votes for the first time since its foundation by the FPÖ-affiliated Ring Freedom Students (RFS).
Reorganization as JuLis
At the federal forum of the LSF in January 2009, far-reaching innovations were decided. On the one hand, the LSF, which had already appeared on various occasions under the name JuLis, was finally renamed JuLis - Junge Liberale Österreich, on the other hand a new association structure was created.
On April 20, 2009, MEP Karin Resetarits announced that she would enable the Young Liberals to take part in the European elections in Austria 2009 with her support. This was preceded by the considerations of the Liberal Forum to take part themselves - but the signature of Karin Resetarits, which had been promised to the LIF for a long time, surprisingly gave it to the Young Liberals. Efforts by JuLis chairwoman Alegra Raising were decisive in this regard. This step led to a significant alienation of the JuLis from their former parent party LIF. The Young Liberals competed in the 2009 European elections with the most recent list of all eight parties. The top candidate was Hannes Müllner from Carinthia, who lives in Graz. The entry into the European Parliament was not successful with a result of 0.7 percent of the votes (20,668 eligible voters).
Also in the 2009 ÖH election, the JuLis competed at numerous universities, including all major universities with the exception of the University of Vienna . At the University of Vienna, the Young Liberals failed for formal reasons and could not run at all, and the list association required for entry into the ÖH federal representation was not allowed. The JuLis were therefore not represented in the ÖH representative offices or in the federal representation of the ÖH during the period from 2009 to 2011.
On the III. Federal Congress in Vienna on October 30th and 31st, 2010, the JuLis announced a candidacy for the 2011 ÖH elections and unanimously decided on their "Liberal University Program". Furthermore, it was Nikolaus Scherak elected as the new Federal chairman; The top candidate was Claudia Gamon . In the 2011 ÖH elections, the JuLis won three mandates in the federal representation and several mandates in individual university representations ( University of Vienna , Vienna University of Economics and Technology , Vienna University of Technology ).
Cooperation with NEOS
On October 27, 2012, the JuLis took part in the founding of the NEOS party - The New Austria and Liberal Forum . JuLis chairman Nikolaus Scherak was elected to the board of NEOS. The JuLis initially continued to exist as an independent organization. In the 2013 ÖH elections, the JuLis with the top candidate Claudia Gamon achieved the highest percentage gain of all the participating parliamentary groups with a plus of 2.2% and were able to double their mandates in the university representatives from four to eight. In addition to the University of Vienna, the Vienna University of Economics and Technology and the Vienna University of Technology, the JuLis were also represented at the Karl-Franzens-University Graz, the Technical University Graz and the Leopold-Franzens-University Innsbruck.
On March 22, 2014, at a federal congress in Salzburg, the party was renamed JUNOS - Young Liberal NEOS and thus integrated into the NEOS party structures. The national chairman of JUNOS was the previous JuLis chairman and NEOS member of the National Council, Nikolaus Scherak , who was previously a member of the NEOS board. At the XI. Federal JUNOS Congress in Vienna, Scherak resigned as chairman of JUNOS and handed over the leadership of the Young Liberals NEOS to Douglas Hoyos , who had previously been one of his deputies.
Start-up as a young liberal student
JUNOS Students was founded as a branch of JUNOS - Junge Liberale NEOS, in order to take care of university political agendas in the future and to take part in ÖH elections. Christoph Wiederkehr became the founding chairman of the JUNOS students in 2014. In 2015, the 2nd Ordinary General Meeting of JUNOS Students decided on the basic program of JUNOS students.
In the 2015 ÖH elections, JUNOS students and top candidate Niko Swatek received 11.2 percent of the votes nationwide. This meant a doubling of the JUNOS mandates from three to six, while the ÖH electoral reform in 2014 halved the body of the ÖH federal representation (from 100 to 55).
Leonie Salzmann headed the organization from 2015 to 2016. In 2016, Yannick Shetty took the chair. In 2017, he ran as the top candidate in the ÖH elections and, with 12.6 percent of the vote, achieved the best result ever achieved by the Austrian Liberals since the LSF was founded. After a further term on the board, Nino Rohrmoser, previously managing director, took over the chairmanship in 2018. Rohrmoser entered the race as the top candidate in the 2019 ÖH elections. After a successful election (the second best result in the history of the Austrian liberals), he did not run again as chairman of the student organization. At the 2019 general meeting, Stephen Slager was elected chairman of the JUNOS students with 87%.
ÖH election results
Results of the LSF, the JuLis and the JUNOS in the ÖH federal representative elections:
| year | Top candidate | percent | BV mandates |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1995 | Johannes Vetter (LSF) | 8.8% | 6th |
| 1997 | Udo Pappler (SPF) | 10.4% | 7th |
| 1999 | Andreas Putz (SPF) | 9.9% | 4th |
| 2001 | Michaela Körberl (SPF) | 5.3% | 2 |
| 2003 | Florian Schweitzer (LSF) | 3.4% | 1 |
| 2005 | Martin Ehrenhauser (LSF) | 3.9% | 1 |
| 2007 | Philipp Weingartshofer (LSF) | 2.27% | 1 |
| 2009 | Alegra-Isabel Raising (JuLis) | 1.7% | 0 |
| 2011 | Claudia Gamon (JuLis) | 4.32% | 3 |
| 2013 | Claudia Gamon (JuLis) | 6.4% | 3 |
| 2015 | Nikolaus Swatek (JUNOS) | 11.2% | 6th |
| 2017 | Yannick Shetty (JUNOS) | 12.61% | 7th |
| 2019 | Nino Rohrmoser (JUNOS) | 10.26% | 6th |
Web links
Individual evidence
- ^ ÖH election 2019 results. Retrieved November 13, 2019 .
- ↑ Board of Directors. Retrieved November 11, 2019 (German).
- ↑ Board of Directors. Retrieved November 11, 2019 (German).
- ↑ ÖH election 2019 - the result | Austrian student body. Retrieved November 11, 2019 .