The appointment this week of a three-man monitoring team, led by the former Finnish president, Mr Martti Ahtisaari, to report on Austria's adherence to common European values, is seen in Vienna as a prelude to lifting the sanctions imposed on Austria by its 14 EU partners almost six months ago.
The three wise men, as they are known, will monitor Austria's treatment of minorities, immigrants and asylum-seekers and assess the "political nature" of Jorg Haider's far-right Freedom Party. The sanctions were imposed over the inclusion in Austria's new government of the Freedom Party, which had campaigned on an openly xenophobic platform.
Since then, Dr Haider has resigned as party leader and the government is confident that the wise men will find nothing to contradict its claim to be committed to human rights, tolerance and the fair treatment of minorities.
"I think this report will prove that Austria is one of the countries that has done and does most in this respect," the Austrian Foreign Minister, Ms Benita Ferrero-Waldner, told me last week.
The government has not implemented some of the anti-immigrant policies advocated by the Freedom Party during the election campaign and Ms Ferrero-Waldner believes Dr Haider's influence within his party is diminishing.
But when Mr Ahtisaari and his colleagues make their report, they would do well to examine the fate of intellectuals who oppose the right-wing coalition, many of whom believe they are victims of a government-sponsored witch-hunt. Austrian artists, journalists and intellectuals describe a climate of fear and intimidation they believe is part of an attempt by the government to silence opposition.
Journalists on the public service television channel ORF have been threatened with dismissal for being too critical of the government and some coalition politicians have called for weekly demonstrations in the centre of Vienna to be banned.
"Austria doesn't have a very big tradition of dissenting democratic structures and I'm very worried about the consequences," said Konrad Becker, one of the founders of Public Netbase, an independent Internet initiative.
The group, which provides Internet facilities for more than 1,200 cultural and political projects, has had its public funding stopped and been told to get out of its offices in Vienna's Museumsquartier by April next year. "As soon as the new government came into place, all project money was immediately withdrawn. They don't even talk to us now," he said.
Ms Ferrero-Waldner argues that, as the new government prunes public spending, everyone's budget is being cut and that most of the complaints by disgruntled artists and intellectuals are nothing more than the predictable gripes of disappointed people. But most of the casualties of the cuts have one thing in common - their opposition to the government.
In a society where most cultural groups depend almost entirely on state subsidy, the budget cuts are nothing less than a death sentence for smaller projects. But the loss of subsidies is not the only threat facing Austria's intellectuals, as Prof Anton Pelinka, the country's leading political scientist, found out recently. Prof Pelinka was convicted in a Vienna court in April of defaming Dr Haider by accusing him of trivialising National Socialism.
Prof Pelinka, who is appealing to the European Court of Human Rights, claims Dr Haider is using the libel laws to silence his critics. "Less privileged people than me will consider very carefully what they say in future. Because they don't want to spend five years in the courts until Strasbourg proves them right," Prof Pelinka said.
Ms Ferrero-Waldner dismissed the furore over Prof Pelinka as a political interpretation of a private, legal matter. "We have independent courts and maybe this was not a very fantastic judgment. But who are we to judge that?" she said.
But other intellectuals claim there is a sinister pattern in the government's behaviour and Walter Famler, who edits the literary magazine Wespennest, says the Pelinka case ought to ring alarm bells about the coalition. "They really want to destroy the public standing of people like Pelinka with every means they can find. The hard-core Nazis in Germany threaten people with violence. Here they want to corrupt people," he said.
Although Ms Ferrero-Waldner claims her government's attempts to make changes in political programming on television are aimed at creating more objectivity and efficiency, all the journalists being targeted are critical of the coalition.
Prof Wolfgang Neugebauer, who runs an archive documenting Austrian resistance to the Nazis, was targeted by Dr Haider for a libel action after he described the Freedom Party as an extreme rightwing, xenophobic party. The case has not yet come to court but Prof Neugebauer fears that, if he loses, he will no longer be able to publish such works as his guide to rightwing extremism in Austria.
"I see the fact that the government and the Freedom Party is attempting to assert its political influence in all institutions and in every sphere and to limit the rights of the opposition and of those who think differently," he said.
While the Foreign Minister does not favour a ban on the demonstrations against her government that attract thousands each Thursday evening, she suggested that groups taking part in the protests could see their state subsidies disappear.
"The demonstrations can go on forever but on the other hand I think it's also a question sometimes of subsidies. Because these people have their stands here and so on. Maybe they get the money from somewhere," she said.
Austria's government is hoping the three wise men will start work on their report as soon as possible but Prof Neugebauer believes that, if they want to get a clear insight into the nature of the new coalition, Mr Ahtisaari and his colleagues must look at the position of Austria's dissident thinkers.
"It's not enough just to look at certain legal norms, you have to look at what's happening in practice," he said.
Public Netbase is at www.t0.or.at Wespennest at www.wespennest.atdstaunton@irish-times.ie