Legislative elections e polling stations open in Austria. More than six million voters are called to the polls to renew the 183 seats of the Nationalrat, the lower house of the Vienna Parliament.
The Freedom Party is favored in voting intentions (FPOe, far-right formation) by Herbert Kickl at 27%followed by the Austrian People’s Party (OeVP), of Chancellor Karl Nehammer, at 25%. According to forecasts, the Social Democratic Party (SPOe) could obtain 21% of the vote. 9% are the Greens, part of the outgoing government’s coalition.
Austrian People’s Party aims to overtake, FPOe’s lead reduced
Meanwhile, Chancellor Nehammer’s Austrian People’s Party (OeVP) is aiming to overtake in the polls. “From my point of view, we have started to overtake after an enormous race to catch up”, declared the general secretary of the People’s Party Christian Stocker, on the occasion of a final event of the campaign. It is clear that at this stage two parties are equally in the lead, he added, speaking of a race for a “photo finish” victory.
Immigration was a central theme of the election campaign: Herbert Kickl’s FPOe intends to crack down by accelerating the repatriation of immigrants to their countries of origin. OeVP leader and Austrian Chancellor Nehammer reiterated today his refusal to cooperate with Kickl, although the party as such remains a possible partner. Kickl personally does not meet the criteria for a responsible and effective government: “That’s why I excluded him,” Nehammer said. The Greens, formerly a coalition partner of the OeVP, expect around 9% of the vote, as does the liberal Neos.
Nehammer has ruled out entering a government led by Kickl due to the radical change that the latter has given to his movement. The Austrian president, the ecologist Alexander van der Bellen, recalled that nothing obliges him to entrust Kickl – under whose leadership during the pandemic the FPOe has become closer to the conspiracy scene and the identitarian movement – the task of forming a government, even in the case of a victory for the FPOe. However, the OeVP could consider entering into a coalition with the far-right party if Kickl was willing to leave the prime ministership to someone else.
A victory for the OeVP is also possible, in which case a coalition with the FPOe could be more likely: the two parties have already governed together in the past, their positions – especially on economics and immigration – are not very distant and Kickl could have no claim to becoming prime minister.
In any case, polls suggest that the coalition between conservatives and Greens that has led the government in Vienna for the last five years will not be able to move forward, remaining well below the minimum 92 seats needed for a majority, and that the center party -the right will probably hold the balance, able to choose between a coalition with the FPOe, or a possible three-way alliance with the centre-left SPOe and the Greens or the Neos liberals.
Led by the controversial former Interior Minister Herbert Kickl, the FPOe, anti-immigration, hostile to Islam and strongly Eurosceptic, has condensed its program into a hundred pages, entitled “Fortress Austria, Fortress of Freedom”: it plans to reduce subsidies for migrants and asylum seekers to a minimum, block family reunification for immigrants already present in Austria and promote “remigration”, in particular for those who have committed crimes.
He also wants to reduce corporate income taxes and wage costs, and in foreign policy he opposes EU sanctions against Russia and further aid to Ukraine. The FPOe has signed and renewed a “cooperation agreement” with Vladimir Putin’s United Russia party. The FPOe has dominated the political scene since the end of 2022, coming first in the European elections in May. According to previous investigations, two other parties could obtain seats in the assembly: the Beer Party, led by the singer of the punk band Turbobier who wants to “depoliticise politics” (4%, the threshold), and the communist party ( KPOe), which has not had a deputy since the 1950s, but which currently stands at around 3%.
Among the other issues that dominated the election campaign were the cost of living, with the inflation rate remaining above the EU average for almost two years and growth, constantly below this value. Problems whose cause has been attributed by the far right to immigration and the war in Ukraine. Tougher immigration rules have featured – to varying degrees – in the manifestos of all three main parties, with security becoming central to the debate after Vienna police announced last month they had foiled a concert plot by Taylor Swift. Three of the suspects are teenage children of immigrants. After the latest floods – which killed five people in Austria – the issue of climate change has also returned to the top of voters’ concerns.
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