This Sunday, September 29, European eyes were on Austria where voters over 16 were called to renew the 183 deputies of the National Council, or Nationalrat. And one thing is certain, the Austrians favor the right!
The far right catches up and takes off
At the end of the single round of the legislative elections, it is the far-right Freedom for Austria (FPÖ) party which is leading the race with 28.8% of the votes and 56 elected candidates. This is almost 13% more compared to the last election in 2019 which was nonetheless held after the “Ibiza-gate” scandal, which hit FPÖ officials. Their result today is ultimately only a catch-up from 2017, the party obtained 51 seats.
Furthermore, the gap is smaller than expected with the conservatives of the ÖVP of outgoing chancellor Karl Nehammer, who are unable to make up the gap with 26.3% of the votes and 52 seats won for their cause. Their score is nevertheless down significantly compared to 2019 (-11.2), which saw a large part of far-right voters rally around the ÖVP. On the other hand, for the first time in their history, the social democrats of the SPÖ, despite a stable result, finished in third place in a legislative election with 21% of the votes and 41 seats. A defeat which only confirms the trend throughout the elections.
The liberals are ahead of the environmentalists
In the second part of the table, the Greens suffer from their participation in the government and see their score divided by 2 (6% of the votes and 16 seats compared to 26 previously), while the liberals of NEOS stabilize around 8% of the votes and ‘ensure 18 representatives.
Note that the Austrian Communist Party (KPÖ) does not confirm its surprising breakthrough in the Land of Salzburg during the regional election last year, where it received 11.6% of the vote, compared to 0.6% during the previous election! At the federal level this Sunday, only 2.4% of voters voted for him, which does not allow him parliamentary representation despite a clear electoral increase (+1.7%). In addition, the Beer Party (Bier Partei), a satirical party with a program as controversial as it is questionable, granting a central and healthy role to beer, received 2% of the votes.
The disappointed hopes of the conservative right
At the end of the 2019 elections, the very popular Chancellor Sebastian Kurz significantly improved his party’s score and formed an alliance with the Greens. But in May 2021, a scandal hit Austria: Sebastian Kurz was accused of having favored a relative for accession to the head of a public company, as well as of having misappropriated public funds to buy manipulated polls in favor of his camp between 2016 and 2018 published in a media close to power.
Deposed, the chancellor must give way to his Minister of Foreign Affairs Alexander Schallenberg, who will himself give up his seat to Minister of the Interior Karl Nehammer at the end of 2021. It is he who will be the first Western chief executive to visit the Russian president after the start of the War against Ukraine in April 2022 to attempt mediation – in vain.
The blue-green coalition has not been easy, as the Leonore Gewessler scandal attests. Indeed, the Minister of the Environment committed her government by voting in favor of the “European law” on the restoration of nature. Acting in her soul and conscience as a convinced ecologist, she nevertheless acted against the opinion of his own government. The ÖVP party then filed a complaint for abuse of power, and Vienna filed an action for annulment with the Court of Justice of the European Union. Case to be continued and this, in a tense ecological context: the activists of Letzte Generation have announced give up several of their modalities of demands and demonstrations, denouncing the bias in favor of fossil fuels of the coalition government.
Towards a far-right Austrian government
A rififi in the coalition which did not escape the voters, and which probably partly explains the heavy defeat during the European elections last June: the far-right party FPÖ had won a quarter of the votes (+8.2 % compared to 2019), ahead of the conservatives of the ÖVP who lost 10% in five years. The social democrats, with 23% of the votes, remained stable, with a score twice as high as that of the environmentalists.
The sulphurous boss of the FPÖ, Herbert Kickl, has been the favorite to become the next Austrian chancellor since Sunday. In the war between Ukraine and Russia, he puts Moscow and NATO back to back, his party having boycotted Volodymyr Zelensky’s intervention before Parliament. Critic of the “Covid dictatorship”, slayer of immigration, he joined the ranks of the Russophiles Patriots for Europe, the European parliamentary group founded by Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, and chaired by the ambitious Frenchman Jordan Bardella . Enough to promise tempestuous government negotiations for a program that will undoubtedly shift to the right!