Austria set for rightward political turn after Sunday vote
VIENNA — Ahead of Austrian national elections Sunday, the question is less whether the country will swing rightward under the next government and more about how sharp that turn will be, with voters set to reward two major parties that have exploited fears of immigration and Islam.
Chancellor Christian Kern is vowing to take his centre-left Social Democrats into the opposition if defeated and a handful of small parties are struggling to clear the 4 per cent hurdle needed to get seats in parliament. Thus signs point to a coalition between the People’s Party and the Freedom Party — which would represent a shift with implications for the European Union.
The Freedom Party is strongly euroskeptic. And while it has long distanced itself from its Nazi roots, and its leader, Hans-Christian Strache, has dismissed his own links with neo-Nazi organizations as youthful folly, its presence in a government could present a new challenge to moderate EU governments shortly after Germany’s anti-migrant and EU-critical AfD gained seats in the federal parliament for the first time.
Few saw it coming two years ago. Back then, the Social Democratic-People’s Party coalition fervently backed German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s open border policy, as hundreds of thousands of mostly Muslim migrants flooded into Austria and beyond in their search for a better life in Europe’s heartland. The two parties criticized the Freedom Party’s call for closed borders and zero migration.