Career
He was chancellor of Austria from 1997 to 2000. Although Klima was then unknown to the majority of Austrians, in 1992 Chancellor Franz Vranitzky made him of Transportation and Nationalised Industry, a position Klima held till 1996, when he became of Finance for a year. For example, further privatizations took place, and several public services that had been subsumed under the policies of the welfare state were tentatively reduced.
However, just as his predecessor Vranitzky, Klima repeatedly and publicly announced that under no circumstances was he prepared to enter into a coalition with Haider's party. Following the elections of October 1999, in which the Social Democrats sustained heavy losses, Viktor Klima stepped down as the chairman of his party and was succeeded in this capacity by Alfred Gusenbauer. As chancellor he was succeeded by Wolfgang Schüssel from the Austrian People's Party, who formed a coalition government with the Freedom Party in February 2000.
Klima and his party heavily resented the fact that they were removed from rulership. While negotiations to form a new government on the basis of the October 1999 elections were ongoing, Klima "urged fellow EU leaders to help influence the coalition bargaining," an unprecedented call for foreign interference in the political affairs of the sovereign Austrian state whose acting chancellor he still was at the time of this statement. While this failed to influence the outcome of the coalition talks, it led directly to the so-called "sanctions" against Austria, which had no basis whatsoever in the EU charter.
Klima became General Manager of Volkswagen's entire South American operations in mid-2006, and is under contract until 2010. Klima's background in politics as well as in economy predestines him for networking, a capability he has continued to cultivate on the highest level, such as with Argentina's former president, Néstor Kirchner and his predecessor, Eduardo Duhalde.