Austria could be on the brink of installing another far-right chancellor despite past scandals
The “victory” of the right-wing nativist Kremlin-oriented Freedom Party (FPÖ) led by Herbert Kickl in last month’s election was not quite as unexpected or as overwhelming as some British press coverage suggested. The 28.9 per cent it achieved on 29 September had been foreseen in some polls. The FPÖ had polled at 25.4 per cent in the European parliament elections in June. But the official results map shows a country increasingly dominated by the dark blue of the FPÖ, with the new turquoise of the Austrian People’s Party (ÖVP) limited to the west, and the red of the Social Democratic Party of Austria (SPÖ) to conurbations. The FPÖ is not “winning everywhere” but it looks like that at first glance.
The outgoing Conservative (ÖVP)/Green coalition government, originally led by the young Sebastian Kurz and after his fall from grace by the notably less charismatic Karl Nehammer, could not survive growing concern over migration, the cost of living, and economic stagnation.
Their vote fell from 37.5 per cent to 26.3 per cent. The Greens also fell back badly. The SPÖ are stuck at around 20 per cent nationally, clinging onto their urban heartlands – notably Vienna – but seemingly unable to pick up new young voters elsewhere.
The actual outcome of the election – who will govern Austria – is not a foregone conclusion at the time of writing. The SPÖ has already ruled out a deal with the FPÖ. Nehammer has ruled out any ÖVP deal with the FPÖ which included Kickl in government. So there is still the real possibility of a revival of the ÖVP/SPÖ coalition which was common in Austria in the second half of last century.
But there is also every prospect of a FPÖ/ÖVP deal. An FPÖ figure other than Kickl could be made chancellor, or an “independent”, such as eventually emerged in July in the Netherlands in similar circumstances. It is also conceivable that the ÖVP will drop Nehammer as its leader, and accept Kickl as chancellor.
We have been here or hereabouts before. In 2017 the FPÖ entered government as a junior partner in coalition with Kurz’s ÖVP, having won 26 per cent of the popular vote. That coalition ended in chaos in May 2019 with the publication of video evidence taken in Ibiza of the party’s leader and the then vice-chancellor, Heinz-Christian Strache, brazenly discussing how to sell his party’s influence in exchange for media support, and much more. This ‘Ibizagate’ sting did for Strache and for the coalition government – and in the ensuing September 2019 election seemed to have also done for the FPÖ, its vote falling to 16 per cent. It is from that low point only five years ago that it has recovered, under the leadership of Kickl – the minister of the interior in the Kurz government and the first to be dismissed in 2019.
And it goes back further of course, to the coalition government between the ÖVP under Wolfgang Schüssel and the FPÖ led by the highly controversial figure of Jörg Haider after the October 1999 elections. This coalition shocked Europeans and led to temporary sanctions in early 2000 by the other 14 EU member states, cold-shouldering Austria. Haider himself was not included as a minister. But times have changed. Many national governments now involve the FPÖ’s sister parties: in Italy, the Netherlands, Hungary, Slovakia, and so on. The participation of extreme right-wing parties in government seems to have been normalised – although not quite yet in Germany.
The possible installation of the FPÖ as the lead partner in a coalition should send shivers up many spines across Europe, and in the UK. Austria’s unique brand of neutrality may be turned in Russia’s favour to undermine support for Ukraine. The EU would be faced by an unwelcome addition to its bloc of awkward Danubian member states. And inside Austria not only recent migrants but also those long settled and with Austrian citizenship will be made to feel positively unwelcome, facing the proposition of “Remigration” – in other words, expulsion.
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