An Austrian Social Democrat whether being outside NATO is a handicap for the Presidency of the EU and from the Prime Minister, Mr Viktor Klima, down, it seems, they will reply, "Sure didn't Ireland have a very successful Presidency?" (although, I have to confess, the "sure" is mine own addition).
Imposed "voluntarily" on the Austrians as an implied condition for the withdrawal of the occupying powers and full sovereignty in 1955, the idea evolved then into a principle of foreign policy, necessity being the mother of invention.
Austria's neutrality, it was argued, gave it a special place in the heart of central Europe as a privileged interlocutor between West and East during the Cold War.
Today polls show strong attachment to the idea among voters, although a majority of parliament arians would almost certainly vote now for NATO membership.
For some observers that attachment, not unlike Ireland's own, has less to do with a vision of European security than with an uneasiness in identifying with the security posture of their bigbrother neighbour, in Austria's case, Germany.
Writing in Suddeutsche Zeitung, the commentator Michael Frank contends that "every thought and effort [on the part of Austria] is with a view to being regarded as thoroughly non-German. This emotional stereotype, which is at times aggressive, has become the pillar of national consciousness."
Andreas Unterberger, the editor of Austria's Die Presse and a prominent advocate of NATO membership, agrees. But he adds to the picture a combination of an unspoken historical anti-Westernism in the ranks of the country's socialist movement, pacifism among the Greens, and ignorance among the population.
A poll conducted by Die Presse last year found that some 65 per cent of Austrians believed that the UN had a special obligation to defend a neutral country if it came under attack.
He berates politicians for their unwillingness to face up to changed times, attributing it to what he sees as the country's characteristic weakness, "hesitation".
He cites the description by 19th-century poet Franz Grillparzer of his native land: "It is the curse of our noble home: aspiring only to half the ends, doing half the deeds, and using half the means."
Within the government there are major divisions over NATO membership, papered over thinly by an agreed moratorium on public disputes for the duration of the presidency.
Attempts to patch together a deal between the coalition leaders, the Social Democrats, and their Christian Democrat allies in the People's Party foundered when the two failed in March to agree a joint statement. The latter had asked for a commitment to "intensified dialogue with NATO", seen by the Social Democrats as implying an eventual commitment to join.
The People's Party Foreign Minister, Mr Wolfgang Schussel, while refraining from attacking his partners, makes no bones about his disappointment. He argues that the changing security environment since the end of the Cold War makes the traditional rationale of Austria's position as a bridge between East and West no longer relevant.
Nor is the issue politically difficult for him in the way it would be for Fine Gael - on his right the populist Joerg Haider's Freedom Party supports NATO membership while the liberal-left Liberal Forum supports membership of the WEU. Only the Greens are unanimously opposed.
His party colleagues argue that Austria's domestically uncontroversial willingness to participate in such operations as the NATO-commanded SFOR in Bosnia show that the redefinition of neutrality has in fact reached a point where the idea is increasingly becoming an historical relic, clung to for sentimental but largely irrational reasons.
Austria, so the argument goes, should take its responsibilities to collective security in Europe seriously and join up.
Does all this sound familiar?
Mr Klima told EU journalists in Vienna last week that although the party supports the possibility of a merger between the WEU and the EU in such a way that neutrals could participate, "it is our opinion that NATO brings no added-value to the security of Austria."
He insists that Austria's neutrality has not stopped it contributing substantially to the peacekeeping efforts of the UN - 35,000 Austrian troops have served on blue beret missions.
Mr Heinz Fischer, the Social Democrat speaker of the National Assembly, insists that there is no contradiction between neutrality and international solidarity.
"Nor was it a moral neutrality on the Russian tanks in Czechoslovakia. We don't look on the killers and the killed in the same way." He argues that while Europe needs NATO it can also benefit from the bridge-building efforts of neutrals.
Within the party there are, however, important voices supporting NATO membership. These include the former general secretary, Mr Joseph Cap, and the leader of the MEPs, Ms Hannes Swoboda.
Mr Klima himself sometimes appears ambiguous about the long-term, and has been willing to commit himself to the idea of a European defence community.
"The question is whether joining NATO is the right thing to do when we are on the road to a strong, self-confident European security structure," he has argued.
Yet, as Mr Unterberger points out, NATO is really the only game in town when it comes to providing the means for European collective defence. Even the French have abandoned any notion of "Europe alone".
Importantly there is a sense in Vienna that, while the Social Democrats may be clinging onto neutrality for the sake of form they do admit, off the record, to seeing eventual membership as probable.
While in Dublin the provisions of the Amsterdam Treaty - a commitment to "the progressive framing of a common defence policy . . . which might lead to a common defence" - are cited as evidence that Ireland is successfully resisting such an outcome, in Vienna they are seen as evidence of the inevitable.