After a few years of pulling strings within the background, the previous parliamentary group chairman, common secretary and state secretary tried laborious to chase away the expected collapse of his ÖVP within the EU elections. He didn’t succeed, however this was in all probability due much less to the highest candidate than to the overall temper in the direction of the Folks’s Get together.
It was telling when get together chief Karl Nehammer thanked Lopatka after his appointment, “for placing your self via this”. There was truly nothing to be gained. The ÖVP is ranging from a document consequence, the federal government’s work is taken into account unpopular and it feels just like the Folks’s Get together has been on the everlasting defensive for the reason that involuntary departure of Sebastian Kurz.
The present management knew that they would wish a blinding persona to move the marketing campaign. The issue: no person needed one. So Lopatka got here into the image, somebody who was trusted to do something by way of experience, however who had acquired the picture of a schemer moderately than a cheerful man over the many years.
Altersmilde
Some individuals discovered the main candidate a bit mellow with age on this marketing campaign. There was little proof of the “soiled campaigning” that he was consistently accused of throughout his time as common secretary. Lopatka performed the pro-European conservative who desires to struggle local weather change with combustion engines. Aside from just a few jabs on the character of Inexperienced Get together frontwoman Lena Schilling, he caught to the assaults in opposition to the Freedom Get together which have turn into routine within the ÖVP, with whom he doesn’t wish to type a coalition even with out Herbert Kickl, opposite to the federal get together’s line.
Not everybody believes the East Styrian. Lopatka, though he was a part of the liberal wing of the ÖVP as a spokesman for the peace motion in his youth, has lengthy been thought of a hyperlink to the FPÖ. He was already the overall secretary beneath Wolfgang Schüssel within the black-blue and orange coalitions. The truth that he later led the grand coalition because the black parliamentary group chairman is without doubt one of the many proofs of his political flexibility.
Entered the state parliament in his mid-20s
Despite the fact that Lopatka has now been allowed to take the lead and has discovered a brand new area of exercise within the European Parliament, the lawyer and theologian’s nice occasions are already 1 / 4 of a century in the past. Lopatka, who was already within the state parliament in his mid-20s, achieved his first masterpiece within the Styrian state elections in 2000, when he managed the Folks’s Get together to an eleven p.c improve.
Wolfgang Schüssel introduced Lopatka to Vienna as Secretary Common, the place he led the ÖVP to the highest of the citizens for the primary time in many years with a vigorous anti-Gusenbauer marketing campaign. The wave of success broke within the 2006 election, the Folks’s Get together needed to be part of the grand coalition as a junior associate and Lopatka was left with solely a state secretary, initially for sport, later – with renewed significance – for finance.
State Secretary within the International Ministry
After a one-and-a-half yr break from the parliamentary bench, he returned to the cupboard as State Secretary within the International Ministry. On the finish of 2013, he grew to become parliamentary group chief of the Folks’s Get together and navigated its parliamentary group via a tough, as a result of unpopular, grand coalition.
Throughout this section, Lopatka cemented his fame as a schemer, successful over a number of members of Workforce Stronach with the nice aspect impact of instantly having a black-blue risk in his palms. He maneuvered the highest of the Courtroom of Auditors for his nearer compatriot Margit Kraker and at last performed a number one function within the dismantling of Reinhold Mitterlehner, which had the purpose and results of enthroning Sebastian Kurz.
Since then, Lopatka has been primarily a European politician and is due to this fact match for Brussels and Strasbourg. Nonetheless, it will be daring to foretell that these would be the 64-year-old’s political ultimate vacation spot.
