Austria's Kurz Faces Ouster as Nationalists Turn on Him
(Bloomberg) -- Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Kurz is on track to be ousted Monday after his erstwhile coalition partners in the nationalist Freedom Party lined up behind a motion to dismiss him.
The Freedom Party’s acting chairman, Norbert Hofer, told public broadcaster ORF that his group “will probably support” the no-confidence vote against Kurz and his cabinet that will be decided in parliament later Monday. The motion was brought by Austria’s Social Democrats, the biggest opposition group. It means the country will likely be ruled by a caretaker government ahead of snap parliamentary elections planned for September.
“We are in a period where it would be good to have a technocrat government,” Hofer said on his way into a meeting of his party’s lawmakers in Vienna. It would be the first time since the Austrian state was reconstituted after World War II that a chancellor was dismissed after losing a no-confidence vote.
It’s a reversal of fortune for Europe’s youngest leader and comes just hours after his conservative People’s Party surged to a decisive victory in European parliamentary elections. It netted record support and came in first as the opposition failed to capitalize on the week-old scandal that ensnared his nationalist vice-chancellor and threw the government into disarray.
The decision to call for and back the no-confidence motion could be a high-risk gamble for the opposition because opinion polls suggest Austrians don’t want Kurz removed.
“Kurz would totally embrace his role as a martyr if he’s driven out of office,” Thomas Hofer, a political consultant and analyst in Vienna said on Sunday.
Since taking power in 2017, Kurz has tried to show conservatives across Europe that they can achieve goals by working with their nationalist rivals. But the collapse of his coalition has served rather to highlights the risks of getting into bed with a party that has spent much of its time on the fringes of the mainstream.
©2019 Bloomberg L.P.