With the polls closed and the counting complete, it can finally be said, the Freedom Party of Austria, (Freiheitliche Partei Österreichs, abbreviated to FPÖ), has won the federal elections in the Alpine republic. This is another major victory for the European right, and in particular for the new Patriots for Europe parliamentary group (of which the party is a member) in a very few months, following those in the Czech Republic and the Netherlands, and the consolidation of France's Rassemblement National to the leading political force in the Hexagon. Translated with DeepL.com (free version)
Unprecedented numbers send Kurz era off the rails
The rejection of the current government, born on the ashes of the political career of former enfant prodige Sebastian Kurz, which saw a strange cohabitation between ÖVP (Christian Democrats who are members of the EPP) and the Greens, could not have been more resounding. The environmentalists come out of the poll with broken bones, losing nearly half their support from 13.9 percent in 2019 to 8 percent yesterday. The Christian-Democratic centrists of the ÖVP, as of today the former first party, drop from 37.4% to 26.4%, a robust drop of more than eleven points, which - interestingly enough - move en bloc to the right right right to the FPÖ, which also snatches another two points from the abstention, rising from 16, 1 percent to 29.2 percent, centering both the position of Austria's leading party (a historic achievement, despite the fact that the party was founded back in 1956) and the party's previous preference record, led by Jörg Haider back in 1999, of 26.9 percent.
The debacle is in the middle
Considering the proverbial “air in the air,” the Social Democrats get the half victory of consolidating the old result of five years ago, with a slight retreat that sees them at 21 percent losing just 0.1 percent; a result, however, to be held in safekeeping given the collection of defeats of their neighboring German colleague Olaf Scholz, who, however, sits in the chancellery and certainly pays the price of the unpopular decisions that any government experience requires.
And if we talk about governmental experiences, the one just ended by the Austrian centrists of the ÖVP certainly cannot be said to be quiet. The legislature that has just ended, which in Austria, as in our country, lasts for five years, saw as many as four different governments succeed each other. First was the then Kurz I government (ÖVP+FPÖ), then, following the scandal involving former secretary Hans Christian Strache, the FPÖ was forced to disengage, making way for the Greens (Kurz II government), until the new scandal this time directly involving the chancellor, who, accused of using Foreign Ministry funds to manipulate some polls, was forced to resign, being replaced in the chancellorship by party colleague Alexander Schallenberg, the protagonist of Austria's authoritarian yet catastrophic handling of the Covid 19 pandemic, which in turn cost him his post in December 2021 to be replaced by Karl Nehammer.
Trust crisis and green fatigue: why a result
Trust crisis of the Christian-Socialists and disaffection with green issues thus led the Austrian electorate to swerve vigorously to the right, without any concessions to the other political forces in the parliament (Social Democrats first and foremost, but also toward the liberals of Matthias Strolz's NEOS party). Even the expected mini-boom of the KPÖ, the small Austrian Communist Party, whose rhetoric is very reminiscent of the pseudo-sovereignist rhetoric of the BSW of Germany's Sahra Wagenknecht, did not occur, with the far-left force stopping at 2.3 percent, far short of the threshold.
A party of the inexperienced? Not a chance
What kind of government will it be, then? As some may know, Austria, politically speaking, is a different country from Germany, in some ways more like Italy than the great industrial giant with which it shares a language. Unlike the AfD, whose history after all is very short, the FPÖ already has government experience, both local and national. At the moment, the party led by Herbert Kickl is present in the local governments of four of Austria's nine states: Upper Austria, Lower Austria, Salzburg and Vienna Capital, has long held government and an absolute majority in Carinthia, and has been in the nation's government, albeit as a minority partner, four times already, the first time back in 1983 (with the Social Democrats), and then, again with the Christian Democrats, with Haider, in 1999 and 2002, until the latest experience in 2019. The rhetoric of the “party of the inexperienced” unaccustomed to the machinery of politics, which in part penalizes Rassemblement National and AfD, will therefore be difficult against the FPÖ.
Viennese-style center-right or “cordon sanitaire”?
The puzzle now will be the formation of the new government. Despite the aforementioned governmental experience of the Austrian right, both with the Social Democrats and the centrists in a form similar to our “center-right,” the climate in Europe is very different from even just five years ago. The EPP's closure about possible cohabitation, moreover as minority partners, of the ÖVP, seems total, and the same is true, of course, of the left and liberal parties. The coalition of these forces to keep the election winners out of the control room, however, seems difficult to achieve: the country is in fact clearly going to the right, and a cohabitation with the leftists could lead to a further exodus of votes from the center to the right, not to mention that parties such as the Greens would have to continue to “moderate” their environmentalist demands, and this could also lead to further disaffection on the left, as, moreover, is already happening in Germany where the “extremist” voters of the Greens seem increasingly disenchanted with their party.
Centrists and Social Democrats could theoretically govern, however: 92 deputies are enough, and together they add up to 93, one more than necessary. But how solid would a government be that, in the event of a cold in a single MP, would risk apnea? One hypothesis might be to involve the NEOS liberals, but the liberalist recipes of this outfit might be unwelcome to the more social and labor base of Austrian Social Democracy, which, among other things, was first party only in Vienna, and not even in all districts, and is now third force in the rest of the country.
European patriots overlook the Danube
What is interesting is undoubtedly the broadening of the view to the entire context of Central Europe, a geopolitically critical band, given the current Ukrainian conflict, which sees the countries of the Danube basin becoming increasingly friendly toward the line of the new Patriots of Europe party: the parties of this new European formation are in fact now in government in Hungary, are large majorities in the Czech Republic and first political force in Austria, and very similar positions are being carried out by Slovak President Robert Fico. Mitteleuropa is looking increasingly to the right and is welded to Giorgia Meloni's Mediterranean, Geert Wilders' Netherlands and East Germany now hegemonized by the AfD. How long can Brussels hold out before it acknowledges reality and revises its dogmas and ostracism?
Research fellow at the Machiavelli Center. A philosophy scholar, he has been working for years on the topic of the revaluation of nihilism and the great German Romantic philosophy.
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