Austria´s coalition between centre-right and far-right parties caused a shock in 2000. A new version of the coalition in 2017 is just as serious but less of a surpriseBack in 2000, when the late Jörg Haider´s far-right Austrian Freedom Party (FPÖ), which had won 27% of the vote in the general election the previous autumn, joined the centre-right Austrian People´s Party (ÖVP) in government in Vienna, governments in Europe and beyond reacted with shock and outrage. The EU imposed diplomatic sanctions. The European parliament said Austria should be suspended if the new government breached European principles. Israel withdrew its ambassador. The New York Times urged the Clinton administration to do likewise. In the event, the ÖVP-FPÖ coalition survived its pariah status uneasily for five years, then fell apart in 2005.Today, 17 years on from that first coalition, a second coalition between the two parties of the right now seems likely. In Sunday´s Austrian general election the People´s party and the Freedom party emerged as the big winners, with 32% and 26% of the vote respectively after a campaign in which they vied with one another to attack migration through the Balkans and the perceived threat to Austria from what the ÖVP leader Sebastian Kurz called `political Islam`. Between them, the two parties increased their share of the vote by 13%. Mr Kurz greeted the result as a mandate for change. A new alliance between the two is therefore the most likely outcome, though it is not the only one. The social democratic SPÖ, which held its own on Sunday with 27%, voted today to begin talks with the Freedom party so see if it could thwart Mr Kurz. A renewed centre party coalition between the ÖVP and the SPÖ, of the kind that has ruled since 2006, is not out of the question either. Continue reading...
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