Most of the countries listed (specifically Poland, Portugal and Ireland) are very religious, but that doesn't immediately have to say they're socially conservative. For inbstance, as NYGOP mentioned, Ireland is becoming increasingly liberal.
But since I can only really go by personal experience, I have to say that Austria is so far the most socially conservative European country I've been to. (Then again the Alps region in general is very conservative, not just Austria, but also Bavaria, Switzerland, Liechtenstein and northern Italy ie. South Tyrol).
A little sitenote: I´m not sure, if the FPÖ´s success counts as a sign that Austria is generally a conservative country... it´s probably a sign that they are xenophobic and a bit too much anti-Semitic?
Other thoughts?
I'm not sure if Austria is
endemically xenophobic, but there certainly tends to be rather strong anti-Semitic and xenophobic fervour within Austrian society (at least if some surveys are to be believed). And then of course there was Kurt Waldheim...
However, the success of the far right is not unique to Austria and unfortunately we've seen the same problem in many other European countries (Vlaams Blok in Belgium, France's Front Nationale, Northern League in Italy, UKIP in Britain, etc) where extreme nationalistic/xenophobic parties are attracting roughly 10-20% of the vote. Whether this suggests a growing tide in xenophobia is up for debate (I doubt
all the people who vote for these parties are xenophobic, most of them look for a protest vote and are simply too stupid to understand the truly evil nature of these parties), but I can't say it doesn't worry me.
