Austrian parties waged intense campaigns ahead of Sunday's referendum on the future of the mandatory military service, using the debate on defence policy to score points ahead of a
parliamentary election later this year.
Voters will choose between keeping the current system of a conscript army and optional social service for young men, or introducing a professional army and a voluntary community service.
The Social Democratic Party (SPOe) of Chancellor Werner Faymann backs a professional army.
"There is no longer a Cold War and the Iron Curtian no longer exists," Defense Minister Norbert Darabos said in a television debate.
The centre-right People's Party (OeVP), the junior partner in the coalition government, wants to keep things as they are, arguing that Austrian rescue and social organizations depend on young men doing their social service.
"The Federal Army and people's security must not become a private laboratory for the defence minister's crazy ideas," the OeVP's parliamentary leader Karlheinz Kopf said.
Both parties drew up campaigns to promote their respective plans,
and politicians toured the country and television studios like in a full election campaign, clearly trying to mobilize voters ahead of the parliamentary polls that are due after the summer.
The SPOe's reform plan was not based on a review of Austria's security needs.
Rather, the idea was pushed in 2010 by Vienna mayor Michael Haeupl, and Austria's biggest newspaper Kronen Zeitung, an influential daily that has supported the SPOe in recent elections.
Albania's and Sweden's armies turned professional in 2010, followed by Germany and Serbia a year later.
Besides Switzerland, Austria has the last central European army based on military service. In the European Union the other countries with such a system are Cyprus, Estonia, Finland and Greece.
Initially, the Social Democratic Defence Minister Norbert Darabos refused to follow the lead of the Kronen Zeitung, maintaining that a professional defence force would be twice as expensive, and that the current system was "cast in stone."
In the past years, however, he and his party changed their tune and presented new calculations that a new system would not cost more.
Austria has one of the world's lowest defence budgets as a share of the overall economy, spending 2 billion euros (2.7 billion dollars) annually, or 0.6 per cent of the gross domestic product.
Although not only the Social Democrats, but also the Green Party and the right-wing populist Alliance for the Future of Austria have campaigned for ending conscription, they have not fully won over the population.
Recent polls show a narrow lead for supporters of the present system.
Michael Hantich, a 17-year old high school student from Salzburg, said he would vote for conscription on Sunday.
"I'm for keeping things as they are, because otherwise there are far too few people in social services," he said.
He told dpa that the opinion in his class was split. Those like him, who plan to serve in the army, have no problem with conscription, while those who plan on signing up for social service
support favour a professional military, he said.
Both the SPOe and the OeVP have said that they would honour the result of the non-binding referendum.