European Observatory to Combat Radicalization – EOCR
Austria far right eyes historic victory in tight polls
The nation– Austria’s general election on Sunday is shaping up to be a close race which could see the far-right Freedom Party (FPOe) win for the first time, beating the ruling conservatives. In line with other European far-right parties, the radical FPOe has seen its popularity surge in recent months. The FPOe has been part of past Austrian coalitions, but it may not find partners to lead a government, even if it comes first on Sunday.
“It is a time of change. In the past years the FPOe has never been that strong,” Johanna Irrenfried, 32, an orthoptist from Vienna, told AFP. Cementing the FPOe’s image as an anti-establishment party, its leader Herbert Kickl has campaigned on slogans such as “Courageously try something new” and fed on voter anger over migration, inflation and Covid restrictions.
But conservative Chancellor Karl Nehammer has closed the gap in recent weeks, with his People’s Party (OeVP) currently at 25 percent in opinion poll support, just behind the FPOe on 27 percent.
‘Decisive election’
Nehammer has “succeeded in presenting the party as at the centre of the political spectrum,” Andreas Eisl, researcher at the Jacques Delors Institute, told AFP.Widespread flooding caused by Storm Boris across central and eastern Europe this month, which briefly halted the campaign, highlighted concerns about climate change, which the FPOe largely dismisses.
“We don’t feed off problems, but solve them,” Nehammer, 51, told reporters at the party headquarters in Vienna on Friday, promising “stability instead of chaos”.
The FPOe will hold a rally later Friday in Vienna’s posh first district in front of the main cathedral rather than at a workers’ district on the outskirts of the capital, where it often has gatherings. Kickl, 55, took over and rejuvenated a scandal-tainted party in 2021. On the war in Ukraine, he has slammed EU sanctions against Russia. “It is a decisive election on Sunday,” Rachel Schwarzboeck, 74, an Austrian retiree with Jewish and Polish roots told AFP, adding she would not vote the FPOe formed by former Nazis. “I don’t want a Nazi regime in power in Austria,” she said.
‘Creative solutions’
Nehammer — who currently heads an uneasy coalition with the Greens — on Friday reiterated his refusal to work with sharp-tongued Kickl, who has called himself the future “Volkskanzler,” the people’s chancellor, as Adolf Hitler was termed in the 1930s.
President Alexander Van der Bellen has also expressed his reluctance to see Kickl lead the Alpine country, where more than 6.3 million people are eligible to vote.
Thwarting a Kickl chancellorship could be a three-party coalition — another first for Austria — headed by the OeVP, with the Social Democrats who are polling at just above 20 percent and a third party, probably the liberal NEOS.
If the OeVP wins the most seats or is almost as strong as the FPOe, analysts see a possibility of a coalition with the far right as a junior partner.The two parties’ views converge “on many subjects”, said analyst Eisl, and “creative solutions” could be found to deal with Kickl.The first government between the conservatives and FPOe in 2000 set off widespread protests and sanctions from Brussels.
But since then, radical parties have been on the rise throughout Europe, including forming governments in Italy and the Netherlands.But past OeVP-FPOe governments have been short lived. The last one, headed by charismatic then OeVP leader Sebastian Kurz collapsed over an FPOe corruption scandal in 2019, after just a year and a half in power.
