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ELECTIONS

Austria conservatives win most votes in snap election while far right suffer losses

Austria's 33-year-old former Chancellor Sebastian Kurz was on course to win snap elections on Sunday despite a scandal which engulfed his previous far-right allies, projections showed on Sunday.

Published: 29 September 2019 18:43 CEST
Austria conservatives win most votes in snap election while far right suffer losses
Photos: AFP

His erstwhile coalition partners, the scandal-hit far-right Freedom Party (FPOe), meanwhile, dropped from almost 26 percent at the last election to around 16 percent.

The election was triggered by a corruption scandal which engulfed the FPOe in May and brought down the OeVP-FPOe coalition.

The centre-left Social Democrats look set for their worst-ever result on around 22 percent of the vote. 

The Greens were the other big winners, reversing a disastrous performance in 2017 which saw them fail to enter parliament to win at least 13 percent this time round, which would be their best-ever score.

The small liberal NEOS party scored around seven percent.

The parliamentary elections were broughtabout by the “Ibiza-gate” corruption scandal that engulfed Kurz's far-right coalition partner in May, after just 18 months in government together.

Kurz has “nothing to win, but a lot to lose”, Die Presse daily warned in an editorial on Saturday.

“Even with a nice plus on Sunday, it is more difficult for him than in 2017,” it said, adding there was no partner that quite suited any more.

With 6.4 million people eligible to vote, polling stations across the country opened at 7:00 am.

Far-right troubles

Analysts say “whizz-kid” Kurz could once again partner with the Freedom Party (FPOe) in a re-run of the coalition that has been touted by Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban and other nationalists as a model for all of Europe.

“We vote to decide in which direction we will go — that of Orban and the populists, or if we stay oriented toward Europe…. we decide if the corruption will go on,” Vienna voter Gabriel Steiner, 29, said.

Fresh allegations of wrong-doing have shaken the far-right FPOe over the past week.

Prosecutors confirmed Thursday they were investigating Heinz-Christian Strache, who resigned as FPOe leader and vice-chancellor in May because of “Ibiza-gate”, over fraudulent party expense claims.

Kurz himself has also warned that left-leaning parties could gain more seats than predicted and then band together to form a coalition without him.

“If there is just a little shift… then there will be a majority against us,” Kurz told supporters at a final rally in Vienna on Saturday.

 Climate matters

Unlike in 2017, the top voter concern is not immigration — a welcome topic for Kurz and his former far-right allies — but climate change.

“It's an important vote for the climate. Past governments have done much too little,” Vienna voter Peter Litzlbauer, 26, said.

Tens of thousands of people marched Friday in Vienna and other Austrian cities to demand the government do more to fight climate change.

The protests were part of global demonstrations led by Swedish activist Greta Thunberg and the biggest yet in the Alpine country of 8.8 million inhabitants.

Against this backdrop, Austria's Greens — who failed to get into parliament in 2017 in a shock result — look set to make the biggest inroads on Sunday.

They were tipped to garner 13 percent, up 10 percentage points from two years ago.

It remains to be seen if Kurz, a former law student who has enjoyed a rapid ascent through the ranks in Austrian politics, tries to woo them and another small party, the liberal NEOs, to form a partnership.

Another option for Kurz could be to form a coalition with the Social Democrats (SPOe).

Since World War II, either the OeVP or SPOe have always governed, and for 44 years in total the two ruled together, but it was Kurz who ended their last partnership, leading to the 2017 polls.

He has also floated the idea of ruling in a minority government. But this would potentially continue political uncertainty and could even trigger another election.

Either way, negotiations between parties are expected to take months again. 

Ultimately, President Alexander Van der Bellen, a former Greens leader, will need to approve any government.

The OeVP-FPOe government imploded in May when two German media outlets published footage filmed secretly on the Spanish resort island of Ibiza, showing Strache appearing to offer public contracts in exchange for campaign help from a fake Russian backer.

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EUROPEAN UNION

Norway flirts with the idea of a ‘mini Brexit’ in election campaign

On paper, Norway's election on Monday looks like it could cool Oslo's relationship with the European Union but analysts say that appearances may be deceiving.

Published: 11 September 2021 14:08 CEST
Norway flirts with the idea of a 'mini Brexit' in election campaign
The Centre Party's leader Slagsvold Vedum has called for Norway's relationship with the European Union to be renegotiated. Photo: Gorm Kallestad / NTB / AFP

After eight years of a pro-European centre-right government, polls suggest the Scandinavian country is headed for a change of administration.

A left-green coalition in some shape or form is expected to emerge victorious, with the main opposition Labour Party relying on the backing of several eurosceptic parties to obtain a majority in parliament.

In its remote corner of Europe, Norway is not a member of the EU but it is closely linked to the bloc through the European Economic Area (EEA) agreement.

The deal gives Norway access to the common market in exchange for the adoption of most European directives.

Both the Centre Party and the Socialist Left — the Labour Party’s closest allies, which together have around 20 percent of voter support — have called for the marriage of convenience to be dissolved.

“The problem with the agreement we have today is that we gradually transfer more and more power from the Storting (Norway’s parliament), from Norwegian lawmakers to the bureaucrats in Brussels who are not accountable,” Centre Party leader Trygve Slagsvold Vedum said in a recent televised debate.

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Defending the interests of its rural base, the Centre Party wants to replace the EEA with trade and cooperation agreements.

However, Labour leader Jonas Gahr Store, who is expected to become the next prime minister, does not want to jeopardise the country’s ties to the EU, by far Norway’s biggest trading partner.

“If I go to my wife and say ‘Look, we’ve been married for years and things are pretty good, but now I want to look around to see if there are any other options out there’… Nobody (in Brussels) is going to pick up the phone” and be willing to renegotiate the terms, Gahr Store said in the same debate.

Running with the same metaphor, Slagsvold Vedum snapped back: “If your wife were riding roughshod over you every day, maybe you would react.”

EU a ‘tough negotiating partner’

Initially, Brexit gave Norwegian eurosceptics a whiff of hope. But the difficulties in untangling British-EU ties put a damper on things.

“In Norway, we saw that the EU is a very tough negotiating partner and even a big country like Britain did not manage to win very much in its negotiations,” said Ulf Sverdrup, director of the Norwegian Institute of International Affairs.

While Norwegians have rejected EU membership twice, in referendums in 1972 and 1994, a majority are in favour of the current EEA agreement.

During the election campaign, the EU issue has gradually been pushed to the back burner as the Centre Party — which briefly led in the polls — has seen its support deflate.

The nature of Norway’s relationship to the bloc will depend on the distribution of seats in parliament, but experts generally agree that little is likely to change.

“The Labour Party will surely be firm about the need to maintain the EEA agreement,” said Johannes Bergh, political scientist at the Institute for Social Research, “even if that means making concessions to the other parties in other areas”.

Closer cooperation over climate?

It’s possible that common issues, like the fight against climate change, could in fact bring Norway and the EU even closer.

“Cooperation with the EU will very likely become stronger because of the climate issue” which “could become a source of friction” within the next coalition, Sverdrup suggested.

“Even though the past 25 years have been a period of increasingly close cooperation, and though we can therefore expect that it will probably continue, there are still question marks” surrounding Norway’s future ties to the EU, he said.

These likely include the inclusion and strength of eurosceptics within the future government as well as the ability of coalition partners to agree on all EU-related issues.

Meanwhile, Brussels is looking on cautiously. The EEA agreement is “fundamental” for relations between the EU and its
partners Norway, Iceland and Liechtenstein, according to EU spokesman Peter Stano.

But when it comes to the rest, “we do not speculate on possible election outcomes nor do we comment on different party positions.”

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