The Popular Party closes the crisis caused by the resignation of Sebastian Kurz’s politics with the appointment of Karl Nehammer, a hard man on immigration issues
The Austrian People’s Party (OEVP), which governs in coalition with the Greens, appointed Interior Minister Karl Nehammer, who will become Chancellor, as its new head on Friday, to turn the page after the resignation of Sebastian Kurz. “I am very grateful, it is an honor and a privilege that I did not expect,” Nehammer told a press conference in Vienna. The 49-year-old politician also announced a major restructuring of the government agreed by consensus with environmentalists, they are right-wing partners in the Executive since January 2020. “Our goal is to quickly start discussions with the president,” Alexander Van der Bellen, who will have to confirm the new government. Nehammer will thus become the fifth Austrian Chancellor to hold this position since 2016.
This announcement closes the crisis caused by Kurz’s decision to leave politics after a meteoric career, frustrated by an accusation of corruption. Kurz resigned his post as chancellor last October due to the opening of the investigation, but he remained in command of the party until two days ago.
Alexander Schallenberg assumed the chancellorship on an interim basis and resigned on Thursday, when Kurz’s retirement was made public, to allow the positions of the country’s chancellor and party chief to be once again in one person. Shallenberg returns to his old post as foreign minister. Finance Minister Gernot Blumel also resigned on Thursday. Magnus Brunner, until now Secretary of State in the Ministry of Energy, will assume the main economic portfolio.
Kurz said at his farewell that he wanted to start “a new chapter” and said he was “exhausted” by the recent accusations. In October, several headquarters, including the Chancellery and the Ministry of Finance, were raided in the framework of an investigation into allegations of embezzlement between 2016 and 2018. According to the indictment, praiseworthy articles and polls favorable to Kurz were published between these years in exchange for the purchase of an advertising space by the Ministry of Finance, at that time in the hands of the conservatives.
Military past
Nehammer, born in Vienna in 1972, married with two children, began his career in the Army, where he reached the rank of lieutenant, to later become a television face, take a turn towards political communication and later be elected deputy in 2017 In January 2020 he was appointed minister.
Experts consider him a leader “loyal” to his training, but despite having been a government minister, he is not close to Kurz. Nehammer is uncompromising on issues such as the right to asylum and has been harshly criticized by NGOs for expelling children in the middle of the night and for wanting to send Afghan citizens to Kabul at a time when the Taliban were about to seize power.
The cascade of relays on the Austrian political front line coincides with a new wave of coronavirus cases that has led the authorities to again decree home confinement, as well as to especially restrict the room for maneuver of unvaccinated people.
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