SHARE
COPY LINK

POLITICS

‘Challenging task’: foreign minister to become Austrian leader after graft scandal

Austria's top diplomat Alexander Schallenberg on Sunday said an "enormously challenging task" awaited him after embattled Chancellor Sebastian Kurz named him as his successor in a spectacular leadership change in the EU member.

Austria's Foreign Minister Alexander Schallenberg (C) arrives to meet Austria's President at Ballhausplatz in Vienna, on October 10, 2021. 
Austria's Foreign Minister Alexander Schallenberg (C) arrives to meet Austria's President at Ballhausplatz in Vienna, on October 10, 2021. Photo: ALEX HALADA / AFP

Kurz – at age 35 one of Europe’s youngest leaders and long celebrated as a “whizz kid” — announced late Saturday that he was stepping down as chancellor, bowing to pressure to resign after he was implicated in a corruption scandal.

Saying he wanted to “make space to prevent chaos,” the conservative — who has headed two governments over the last four years — has suggested foreign minister Schallenberg to take over the chancellery.

‘New chapter’

The 52-year-old diplomat met President Alexander Van der Bellen on Sunday following a talk with Vice Chancellor Werner Kogler of the Greens.

In brief comments before meeting the president, Schallenberg spoke of an “enormously challenging task and time, not easy for any of us”.

“But I think we are showing an incredible degree of responsibility for this country,” he told reporters.

Kogler, who in turn was seeing Van der Bellen, told reporters he had a “good, trustful” meeting with Schallenberg earlier in the day.

“Above all, I am pleased that there is the possibility of opening a new chapter in the government coalition work,” the 59-year-old Greens veteran said.

Kogler had already indicated late Saturday that his party would support Schallenberg to keep the conservative-Greens coalition in government.

Pressure on Kurz to resign, including from the Greens, started after prosecutors on Wednesday raided several locations linked to his People’s Party (OeVP).

They announced that Kurz and nine other individuals were under investigation over claims that government money was used between 2016 and 2018 in a corrupt deal to ensure positive media coverage.

Kurz has denied any wrongdoing, reiterating on Saturday that allegations against him were “false” and that he would seek to clear up the matter while he continues as party leader and as a lawmaker in parliament.

‘Place holder’

Analyst Thomas Hofer said Kurz would, for now, continue to be “the most influential person in the People’s Party on the national stage”.

“In Kurz’ view, Schallenberg is a place holder… Kurz made his move in such a way that he still is in control of the party and the government team on his side,” Hofer told AFP.

The opposition has blasted the continued conservative-Greens coalition given the graft investigation, with Social Democrats (SPOe) leader Pamela Rendi-Wagner saying even on the back benches Kurz would remain a “shadow chancellor”.
The OeVP-Greens coalition — a first at a national level — entered office in January 2020 and has already been put under strain several times by the fallout from other corruption scandals and differences over questions such as refugee policy.
In the latest scandal, prosecutors’ core allegation is that between 2016 and 2018 finance ministry resources were used to finance “partially
manipulated opinion polls that served an exclusively party-political interest”.
This correlates to the time period in which Kurz, already a government minister, took over the leadership of the OeVP and later that of the Alpine nation at the helm of a coalition with the far-right Freedom Party (FPOe).
Prosecutors allege that payments were made to an unnamed media company – widely understood to be the Oesterreich tabloid, which was also raided on Wednesday — in return for publishing these surveys.
In 2019, Kurz’s first coalition with the FPOe collapsed after his ally became engulfed in a corruption scandal dubbed “Ibizagate”.
But fresh elections once again saw Kurz’s OeVP come out on top, leading him to form a coalition with the Greens from January 2020.

Member comments

Log in here to leave a comment.
Become a Member to leave a comment.
For members

POLITICS

How Austria’s centre-left SPÖ party plans to change integration policy

Asylum, migration, and integration policies are a much-debated issue in Austria, particularly as the country heads to its national elections in the fall. What are the centre-left SPÖ plans?

How Austria's centre-left SPÖ party plans to change integration policy

National elections in Austria will take place this fall, and one of the most debated issues – certainly one that has been driving voters for the past few years – is the refugee and asylum policy debates. 

While the far-right party FPÖ has gained popularity with extremist views such as closing off Austria entirely for asylum seekers, the centre-right ÖVP has also presented tougher stances. The chancellor’s party has publicly defended the creation of “asylum centres” for processing outside of the EU borders. Chancellor Karl Nehammer has also fully supported the UK’s plan to deport asylum seekers to “safe third countries”

A tougher stance on refugee policies has proved popular in Austria, and the centre-left SPÖ party has also seemed to lean toward stricter ideas more recently. However, since the party got a new leadership, a precise migration programme had not been presented yet. However, the issue was pressing, particularly following the party’s poor performance in the EU elections, when migration played a key role.

READ ALSO: How a change in the profile of asylum seekers is impacting Austria

So what are the party’s plans?

The SPÖ presented a new” masterplan” for asylum, migration, and integration. According to the SPÖ, the “Doskozil-Kaiser paper,” which has existed since 2018, has been “sharpened,” resulting in an “offensive paper” with approaches for action, said SPÖ leader Andreas Babler.

The aim was to “ensure balance and order” under “the premise of humanity”, said Babler at a press conference in Vienna.

The plan’s main points include faster procedures at the EU’s external borders, a fair distribution of refugees within the EU, and sanctions against countries that refuse to do so. With this, the SPÖ wants to reach a 75 percent reduction in the number of asylum applications. 

For example, the party leaders mentioned Hungary, where there were only 45 applications in 2023, compared to almost 60,000 in Austria. They said Hungary had to be persuaded to cooperate by exhausting all legal and political means.

The SPÖ proposes procedure centres along the EU’s external borders so that procedures can be completed more quickly and people do not hand themselves over to smugglers. The EU should set up “common centres for asylum applications”, for example, in embassies. 

People should only be distributed within the EU once the asylum applications have been assessed favourably. As a first step, cooperation between individual states could occur without the consent of all EU member states.

READ ALSO: When do Austrians think an immigrant is successfully integrated?

‘Integration year’ and deportation

The SPÖ plan contains an “extended mandatory integration year” that would ensure refugees get “German and values courses.” However, severe penalties, including deportation, would be imposed for serious offences or “repeated minor crimes.” 

Instead of mass accommodation, the SPÖ proposes small centres enabling better contact with the population. Women’s rights should also become a “central guiding principle for integration”. Women’s self-determination is the top priority, said SPÖ women’s spokesperson Eva-Maria Holzleitner.

The party reiterated that asylum is fundamentally a human right that should never be questioned. However, those who are denied their asylum request would be deported to their country of origin or safe third countries, the party advocates. 

READ ALSO: Who needs to take Austria’s integration exam?

Criticism from the right

Over the weekend, party representatives from far-right FPÖ and centre-right ÖVP have come out to criticise the SPÖ proposals. 

An FPÖ spokesperson said the plan is “pure PR policy” and that, in truth, the SPÖ had “always opened the door to illegal mass immigration under the guise of asylum”. The ÖVP said the proposals are just “headlines instead of concrete proposals for solutions”. 

In a press release, the party said that no capacity limit was presented, showing “that the SPÖ has still not realised that illegal migration cannot be countered by further squeezing the Austrian taxpayer”

SHOW COMMENTS