Austria

Today the world’s youngest leader takes his place at the top table of European politics, as Sebastian Kurz becomes Chancellor of Austria at the age of just 31. However the toasts in Brussels (and Berlin) will be distinctly muted, for Kurz and his centre-right People’s Party have formed a controversial coalition with Austria’s hard-right Freedom Party – a party shunned by centrist parties throughout the EU. It’s a sign that populism is alive and well in Central Europe. So is this new government merely an Austrian anomaly? Or does it mark the advent of a Pan-European trend? The specifics of this coalition may be peculiarly Austrian, but the generalities reveal a great deal about European politics as a whole.

Yesterday, Sebastian Kurz, the leader of Austria’s conservative People’s Party, announced his intention to form a new coalition government with the far-right Freedom Party (FPÖ). The Austrian far-right have been in federal government before, as recently as the mid-2000s, and narrowly lost last year’s presidential election (which had to be re-run). While the opening of coalition discussions may come as little surprise, it is seen with extreme scepticism by many in Austria and abroad – some worry that such a right-wing coalition will clamp down on civil liberties, others that it might estrange Austria from allies inside the EU. In Moscow, in the meantime, the response to today’s announcement is likely to be positive.

Last year's Austrian presidential election looked like a turning point for the European Union. Alexander Van der Bellen, a soft left Eurofederalist (narrowly) defeated Eurosceptic Norbert Hofer, of the hard right Austrian Freedom Party, and Continental Europhiles went into 2017 with fresh hope that they might halt the tidal wave of Brexit, before it engulfed the EU. Sure enough, this year France and Holland have both returned Europhile candidates, and Germany looks set to follow suit. The tide had turned, the pundits said. 2016 had been the high water mark of Populism. 2017 would be the year the EU fought back.

Something is happening across Europe, says the Sun - but EU leaders are still intent on burying their heads in the sand. Following Matteo Renzi’s defeat in the Italian referendum on Sunday and far-right Eurosceptic candidate Norbert Hofer’s good showing in the Austrian election, it’s clear that ‘voters across Europe are increasingly rejecting the EU’s self-interested ruling consensus,’ the paper says. But while the outcome for the continent does not look good, the signs of instability in Europe can arguably be only a good omen for Theresa May as she looks to negotiate Britain’s Brexit deal.

Austria’s presidential election has been overshadowed by Matteo Renzi’s dramatic defeat in the Italian referendum, but Alexander Van der Bellen’s victory is significant nonetheless. It confirms there are now two Europes, north and south. Southern members like Italy are becoming increasingly hostile towards the EU, while northern members like Austria will do (almost) anything to keep the EU on track. So why did Austria buck the American trend, and chose a Euro-friendly head of state? Churchill said Russia was a riddle wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma. He might have been talking about Austria today. The Austrian capital, ‘Red’ Vienna, has always been socially liberal and politically leftist.

Voters in Austria and Italy head to the polls tomorrow and could plunge the EU into a political and economic crisis, as I say in The Sun today. In Austria, the candidate of a genuinely far-right party—its first leader was a former SS officer—could become president. If the Freedom Party’s Norbert Hofer does win, and the race is too close to predict with any confidence, it’d show that the very extremist forces that the European project was meant to crush are now on the rise—and in part, because of the EU’s own failings. But it is the Italian referendum that could have the more immediate consequences. Italy bans polls just before votes, so we don’t have any up to date polling.

So Austria has a new leader. The radical leftist Alexander Van der Bellen, a former Green party leader running as an independent, has just edged out radical right-wing politician Norbert Hofer in one of the closest elections in European history. After postal votes were counted, Van der Bellen had 50.2 per cent and Hofer 49.8 per cent – a margin of just 0.4 percentage points. Most of the continent will probably breath a sigh of relief while still being disturbed at the size of the radical right vote; more shocking, perhaps, is the fact that among the working-class, there was almost unanimous support for Hofer, with the Freedom Party receiving 86 per cent of votes from workers.

[audioplayer src="http://rss.acast.com/viewfrom22/merkelstragicmistake/media.mp3" title="James Forsyth and Holly Baxter debate Merkel's offer to Syrian refugees" startat=38] Listen [/audioplayer]Of all the irresponsible decisions taken in recent years by European politicians, few will cause as much human misery as Angela Merkel’s plan to welcome Syrian refugees to Germany. Hailed as enlightened moral leadership, it is in fact the result of panic and muddled thinking. Her pronouncements will lure thousands more into the hands of unscrupulous people-traffickers. Her insistence that the rest of the continent should share the burden will add political instability to the mix. Merkel has made a dire situation worse.