A month before the ÖVP party congress, Karl Nehammer, whose most outstanding quality so far has been the ability to reach a consensus, is making a name for himself with a trip to Moscow. Is this the beginning of a new image developed by German PR consultants? And: will the new ÖVP be the old one once more?
The timing isn’t bad. A month before Karl Nehammer – on May 14 in Graz – is elected the 18th federal party chairman of the ÖVP, he makes a name for himself with public appearances that hardly anyone would have believed him capable of. Last weekend he met the Ukrainian President, Volodymyr Zelensky, in Kyiv. And on Monday he was there Wladimir Putin, as the first Western head of government since the start of the Ukraine war. The trip to Moscow was controversial but an attention grabber. International media such as CNN or the “New York Times‘ have reported on it.
Both there and there, Kai Diekmann, formerly editor-in-chief of “Bild” and now a PR consultant, was at Nehammer’s side. With his agency Storymachine, Diekmann advises politicians – usually very discreetly, one only knows of a few. EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen is one of them. Karl Nehammer someone else?
