Austria"s Anti-Immigrant Freedom Party Enters Government; Wins Key Ministry Posts

Two months ago, in Europe"s latest shocking, anti-establishment outcome, Austria"s 31-year-old Sebastian Kurz became the world"s youngest leader after his conservative People"s Party won the Austrian National Council elections, making him Austria"s youngest Chancellor in history, while the establishment Social Democrat party suffered its "worst result since Hitler rule."

Sebastian Kurz and his girlfriend Susanne Thier

And now, two months later, in a double whammy for Europe"s outraged liberal establishment, the anti-immigrant Freedom Party of Austria (FPO) - which finished third in October"s elections with 26% of the vote, less than a percent behind the Social Democrats, has joined a coalition government with Sebastian Kurz and his People’s Party (OVP). The agreement between the People’s Party and the Freedom Party, which is returning to government after more than a decade"s absence, was struck on Friday, the two parties’ leaders, Sebastian Kurz and Heinz-Christian Strache announced in a joint news conference.

Austria"s president approved the new coalition on Saturday, two months after inconclusive elections. According to BBC, the coalition government makes Austria the only country in Western Europe to have a far-right party in power.

Sebastian Kurz and Freedom Party chair Heinz-Christian Strache

Introducing the new government, and the 180-page document setting out its agenda, Mr Kurz said the two parties had agreed "on a clear pro-European outlook". Meanwhile, Strache, who in January advocated a law similar to the ban on Nazi practices to be introduced against “fascist Islam,” spoke about “mutual appreciation” with Kurz, adding that they share “the responsibility for our homeland Austria and for the people in this country.”

While the two parties have yet to unveil the details of the coalition agreement, some of the key points that will shape the next government have already been discussed: among them is a further crackdown on migration

“We want to reduce the burden on taxpayers ... and above all we want to ensure greater security in our country, including through the fight against illegal immigration,” Kurz said.

And while the FPO will be the junior coalition partner, it has already secured several critical posts in the new cabinet. Party leader Heinz-Christian Strache will be vice-chancellor, while his party colleagues will run the ministries of the interior, defense and health and social security. Specifically, Herbert Kickl, will be the new iterior minister: the party"s general secretary and campaign director, 49, was a speechwriter for the late party leader Jorg Haider and is a close confidant of the current leader, Hans-Christian Strache.

For one, the sweep assures that any and all benefits for migrants will be eliminated. To be sure, the opposition has expressed concern that the police and the security apparatus are now all firmly in the hands of the Freedom Party.

Separately, the new foreign minister will be Middle East expert and writer Karin Kneissl, who is not a Freedom Party member but was nominated by the party, which to some suggests that the Freedom Party now effectively runs Austria.  At the request of Austria"s president, the posts of justice minister and interior minister would not be held by the same party, Mr Kurz said.

Today"s crowning success of the far-right Freedom Party, which gained 7 percentage points on the previous elections, come amid a backlash to the immigrant wave that swept Europe in 2015 in the aftermath of Angela Merkel"s now defunct "open door" policy. The party"s hardline anti-immigrant stance emerged after Austria was overwhelmed by a wave of refugees fleeing the US-stoked proxy war in Syria.

Since 2015, the Alpine country took in some 150,000 asylum seekers, which accounts for over 1 percent of its population, one of the largest shares per capita alongside Sweden. The signs of the growing popularity of the far-right was evident in December last year, when Freedom Party candidate Norbert Hofer’s bid to become modern Austria"s first far-right president was only narrowly defeated in a neck-and-neck contest with centrist Van der Bellen.

And so, with Austria set to form a right-wing government, institutionalized opposition to Europe"s liberal “open door” policies on migrants is no longer restricted to the EU"s eastern territories. Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic and Slovakia, with their own conservative governments, remain staunchly opposed to the EU relocation scheme and refuse to take in a single refugee. Now, with Austria joining the "resistance", the anti-migrant wave have officially broken into central Europe.

And now, we await Europe"s response: when the Freedom Party last entered a coalition in Austria in 2000, the country"s fellow EU member states froze bilateral diplomatic relations in response. While they were lifted months later, such measures are unlikely to happen again, as resurgent populist groups have been promoting anti-immigration and eurosceptic agendas across much of the EU, and the last thing any other establishment party wants is to experience a similar revolution in the top political echelons.

Meet The 31-Year-Old Austrian Anti-Immigrant Set To Become The World's Youngest Leader

The front runner in Austria’s Sunday election ended his campaign with a familiar message : Sebastian Kurz pledged to make Austria great again. He is set to become the world’s youngest leader, ahead of France’s Emmanuel Macron, who is 39... oh and North Korea"s 34-year-old Kim Jong-un, of course.

“I want to put Austria back on top,” he told an adoring crowd in Wiener Neustadt according to the Telegraph. “I want to provide security and order, because the Austrian people deserve it.”

Sebastian Kurz

Austrians are voting Sunday in the country"s National Council elections, where according to recent polls the country"s 6.4 million voters are likely to ditch the current coalition in favor of a new government backed by anti-immigration nationalists and headed by a 31-year-old Millennial.

Ahead of today"s election results, the conservative candidate of the Austrian People"s Party (OVP), 31-year-old Sebastian Kurz, is leading the polls with Social Democratic Party (SPO) and the right-wing anti-immigrant Freedom Party (FPO) battling to secure second place. Polls suggest Kurz will lead his conservative People’s Party to victory in Sunday’s election: a victory by the millennial could lead to the unwind of a decade of Social Democratic-led administrations "that revived the economy but struggled with issues over immigration and welfare" and result in the anti-immigrant Freedom Party becoming a part of the coalition government for the first time in history.

To his supporters, Kurz is Austria’s Macron: a one-man political phenomenon who is the only thing standing between the country’s resurgent nationalists and power. But to his detractors he is the Austrian Trump, who has hijacked one of the country’s two main parties and refashioned it in his own image. His critics say he is only holding the populists back by adopting their anti-immigrant rhetoric and policies.

After a surge of support for populist candidates in elections this year in the Netherlands, France and Germany, Austria looks like it will go one further and elect an anti-immigration alliance. The biggest winner will be the aspiring 31-year-old Kurz, who has been Austria’s Minister for Foreign Affairs and Integration since 2013, and who is leading his political campaign along the center-right principles which seem to exploit the refugee issue.

Sebastian Kurz, 31, Austria"s foreign minister and leader of the People"s Party,
greets supporters during his final campaign event in Vienna on Oct. 13

A recent survey by Meinungsraum conducted for GMX.at shows that FPO might secure around 28.5% of the vote, followed by OVP with 26.5%. SPO is expected to attract roughly 20% of the vote. Another poll by Research Affairs/Österreich predicts OVP to secure around 33% of the vote. FPO is predicted to come in second with around 27% , followed by SPO with 23% of the vote.

“People are worried about the future and that is the currency that matters in this election,” said Christoph Hofinger, head of the SORA polling institute in Vienna. “The debate is revolving around the issue of fairness, and a lot is also linked to migration.”

Back in May, Kurz called for a snap election amid tensions with coalition partner, the Social Democrats. The young politician previously backed plans to block refugee routes into Europe and supported a ban on full-face veils. He also supports cracking down on radical Islam, echoing FPO sentiments and luring in nationalist voters.

For the past two years, the issue of how to deal with the influx of migrants has been among the most sensitive in Austrian society. The swell of anxiety over immigration to Austria began building 2015, when almost 70,000 mostly-Muslim refugees sought asylum from war-torn countries such as Syria, Afghanistan and Iraq. Schools and hospitals in the nation of 8.7 million struggled to accommodate the newcomers, and disagreements over whether it was fair to give immigrants generous welfare support dominate the media.

As a result, voters have gravitated toward promises by both the People’s Party and Freedom to limit the number of immigrants Austria receives and force newcomers to adapt local customs more quickly.

Leading FPO candidate Heinz-Christian Strache gained massive support ahead of the election by focusing on the country’s immigration policies and on issues such as unemployment, minimum wage and pensions. The party, founded by a former Nazi SS member after the end of the World War II, stuck the nerve of the electorate by proposing to stop immigration and by speaking out against Islam. The FPO support grew to unprecedented levels following EU-wide "Open Door" migrant policy championed by Germany in wake of 2015 refugee crisis.

While the biggest number of migrants was welcomed by Berlin, Austria received nearly 150,000 asylum requests since 2015. Comprising just over 1 percent of the population, their presence in the country became the number one debated issue in the election.

Meanwhile, the incumbent chancellor of Austria and chairman of the Social Democratic Party, Christian Kern, is virtually assured to lose his place as the head of the government. Unlike his rivals, Kern advocates a much softer stand on migration, instead placing emphasis on employment and the economy. Kern, 51, a former business executive plucked from the national railroad by the Social Democrats in May 2016, has been dogged by sloppy campaign management. Despite overseeing faster growth in the export-oriented economy, Kern has struggled to connect with voters. His No. 1 goal is achieving full employment, since “modernizing the country with investment in education, security, health care and pensions” depends on it, Kern said late Thursday in the campaign’s final debate.

“Austria deserves someone who is ready to take on real responsibility for the population,” Strache said in a parliamentary speech this week, in which he chided Kern for letting thousands of refugees enter Austria, transported on the national railroad he ran before becoming chancellor.

Regardless of performance in Sunday"s election, the three main parties must work together to form a new coalition government. Neither the OVP nor the SPO has ruled out a coalition with the FPO, which may play the role of the kingmaker at the end of the day since as the revival of OVP/ SPO coalition seems unlikely. Other parties such as the liberal NEOS (The New Austria and Liberal Forum) and the Greens are expected to secure single digits.

Compared with 10 years ago, more Austrians say they feel like they’re not being heard and are in search of law-and-order leadership, a SORA institute study showed. More than two-fifths of voters declared their desire for a “strongman” leader, according to the research, periodically commissioned by the federal government to gauge public attitudes and consciousness about the country’s Nazi history.

Step forward Kurz, the foreign minister who’s distanced himself from the People’s Party’s leadership and forged similar views with Freedom’s Strache on immigration. Both men want to restrict immigrant access to Austria’s social-security system and impose tighter policing on the country’s borders. The Freedom Party came within 30,000 votes of winning the presidency, a mostly ceremonial post, in a run-off vote last year.

In Austria, anyone over the age of 16 is eligible to vote in roughly 13,000 voting locations throughout the Alpine nation. There are about 6.4 million voters, and those who cast their ballots will decide 183 contested seats at the National Council.