THE The nationalist right of the FPÖ, allied with Vox in the European Parliament, won in Austria For the first time in history this Sunday, in the legislative elections. The Austrian Freedom Party (Freiheitliche Partei Österreich) would win with 29.1% of the votes. The party led by Herbert Kickl would win elections for the first time in Austria’s democratic historyafter an electoral campaign marked by proposals against inflationTHE illegal immigration And euroscepticism. Projections from the Foresight Institute would put the FPÖ above 29% of the vote, as previously reported, a slightly better result than predicted by polls taken before Sunday’s elections. The ruling ÖVP party – center-right conservatives led by Chancellor Karl Nehammer – would also perform better than expected, with 26.2%, and the center-left Social Democrats, 20.4%. The Greens, who are part of the ruling coalition with the conservatives, would obtain 8.6% of the vote.
On the other hand, despite the victory of the FPÖ in these legislative elections in Austria, led by Herbert Kickl, The rest of the parties would form a coalition to prevent him from governing with strategies similar to those observed in recent months in France and Germany in Thuringia, Saxony and Brandenburg, the two countries having carried out campaigns against a backdrop of economic crisis and illegal immigration. In France, after Marine Le Pen’s victory in the first round, French President Emmanuel Macron’s strategy with the New Popular Front against French politics worked. In this case, in Austria, the conservatives and the social democrats could form a government relying on the votes of the neos or the greens.
He Freedom Party (Freiheitliche Partei Österreich) was supported by voters concerned about immigration, inflation and the war in Ukraine, as reported in advance. Herbert Kickl, former interior minister and campaign strategist for years in Austria, who has led the party since 2021, He wants to become the new chancellor of Austria.
At a campaign rally last Friday, he demanded “forced emigration” illegal immigrants. “It is not acceptable that we have to protect our people from people who come here seeking protection. Then something is wrong in the system. And that is why we finally need forced emigration. “I don’t even know why that word is supposed to be so mean,” said Kickl, whose party will fall well short of the threshold required for outright victory.
Chancellor Karl Nehammer and his second Austrian People’s Party have already ruled out joining forces with Kickl and urged voters to vote for him to prevent the far right from coming to power. “I have clearly indicated with whom it is not possible to form a responsible and viable government. The current leader of the FPÖ does not meet these criteria. That’s why I excluded it,” he said in Vienna on Friday.
However, Kickl has achieved a turnaround since the last Austrian elections in 2019. In June, the The Freedom Party won by a narrow majority a national vote for the first time in the European Parliament elections, which also brought gains to other far-right European parties. In the 2019 election, his support dropped to 16.2% after a scandal toppled a government in which he was the junior coalition partner.
During the election campaign, voters sought answers to high inflation, averaging 4.2% over the past 12 months, above the EU average, illegal immigration and floods due to the Boris storm, with restrictions due to the pandemic, which angered the population. with the government. In 2022, it was the first European country to introduce a coronavirus vaccination mandate, which was abandoned a few months later without being put into practice.
