Austria’s far-right Freedom Party could win a national election for the first time when Austria goes to the polls on Sunday, capitalizing on voters’ concerns about immigration, inflation, Ukraine and other concerns after recent gains for the hard right. elsewhere in Europe,
Former interior minister and longtime campaign strategist Herbert Kickl, who has led the Freedom Party through 2021, wants to become Austria’s new chancellor. He uses the term “Volkskanzler” or people’s chancellor, which was used by the Nazis in the 1930s to describe Adolf Hitler. Kickal rejects the comparison.
But to achieve this, they will need a coalition partner to command a majority in the lower house of parliament.
And victory is not certain, with recent surveys pointing towards a close contest. They support the Freedom Party at 27%, Chancellor Karl Nehammer’s conservative Austrian People’s Party at 25% and the centre-left Social Democrats at 21%.
Austrian Chancellor Karl Nehammer attends a press conference in Vienna in August. (AP Photo/Heinz-Peter Bader)
Nevertheless, Kickl has achieved a turnaround since Austria’s last election in 2019. In June, the Freedom Party won the nationwide vote for the first time in a European Parliament election, leading to gains for other European far-right parties.
In the 2019 election, its support fell to 16.2% after the government fell due to a scandal in which it was the junior coalition partner. Heinz-Christian Strache, then Vice-Chancellor and leader of the Freedom Party, resigned following the publication of a secretly recorded video in which he appeared to offer a favor to an alleged Russian investor.
The far right has taken advantage of voter frustration over high inflation, the war in Ukraine and the COVID pandemic. It is also able to address concerns about migration.
“Now you don’t really feel safe in your own country,” Margot Sterner, 54, said at an event. “And yet you are being labeled a right-winger because you think about the safety of your people, children and women.” ” Freedom Party campaign event this month.
In its election programme, the Freedom Party calls for achieving a more “homogeneous” nation by strictly controlling borders and suspending the right to asylum through “emigration of uninvited foreigners” and “emergency legislation”.
Journalist Gernot Bauer of the Austrian magazine Profile, who recently co-published an investigative biography of the far-right leader, said that under Kickl’s leadership, the Freedom Party has moved “even further to the right” because Kickl Has clearly refused to maintain distance. Party of the Identitarian Movement, a pan-European nationalist and far-right group.
Bauer describes Kickle’s rhetoric as “offensive” and says some of his language is intentionally provocative.
The Freedom Party also calls for an end to sanctions against Russia, criticizing its excessive Western military aid to Ukraine and wants to exit the European Sky Shield Initiative, a missile defense project initiated by Germany.
The leader of the Social Democrats, a party that led several of Austria’s post-World War II governments, has positioned himself as the polar opposite of Kickl. Andreas Babler – who is also mayor of the city of Traiskirchen, home to the country’s largest refugee reception center – has refused to govern with the far right and branded Kickl a “threat to democracy”.
While the Freedom Party has recovered, the popularity of Nehmer’s People’s Party, which currently leads a coalition government with the environmentalist Greens as a junior partner, has declined since 2019.
During the election campaign, Nehmer portrayed his party, which has taken a tough stance on immigration in recent years, as a “strong center” that would guarantee stability amid multiple crises.
But this is precisely the crisis, from Covid-19 pandemic Peter Filzmaier, one of Austria’s leading political scientists, said Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the resulting rising energy prices are costing conservatives support.
Under his leadership, Austria has experienced high inflation averaging 4.2% over the past 12 months, higher than the EU average.
The government angered many Austrians by becoming the first European country to introduce a coronavirus vaccine mandate in 2022, which was scrapped a few months later without being implemented. And Nehmer is the third chancellor since the last election, taking office in 2021 after predecessor Sebastian Kurz – the winner in 2019 – left politics amid a corruption investigation.
But recent flooding caused by Hurricane Boris in Austria and other countries in Central Europe brought the topic of the environment back into the electoral debate and put Nehmer at odds with the Freedom Party by presenting himself as a “crisis manager” Filzmayer. Helped to reduce it a bit. Said.
The People’s Party is the only way for the far right into government.
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Nehmer has repeatedly ruled out joining a Kikal-led government, calling him a “security risk” to the country, but he has not ruled out a coalition with the Freedom Party, which would mean a Kikal government. Will leave the post.
Filzmayer said the chances of agreeing to such a deal were slim if Kickal won the election.
But should the People’s Party collapse first, then a coalition could form between the People’s Party and the Freedom Party, Filzmeyer said. The most likely option would be a three-way coalition between the People’s Party, the Social Democrats, and possibly the liberal Neos.
