Kurz, 31, set to lead Austria
Pledges to clamp down on refugees, stem migrant flow
AUSTRIA voted yesterday in a parliamentary election that could see 31-yearold conservative Sebastian Kurz become chancellor on a pledge to take a hard line on refugees and prevent a repeat of Europe’s migration crisis.
Foreign Minister Kurz propelled his People’s Party (OVP) to the top of opinion polls when he became leader in May, dislodging the far-right Freedom Party (FPO) that had led for a year.
Kurz says he will shut the main migrant routes into Europe, via the Balkans and the Mediterranean.
“We must stop illegal immigration to Austria because otherwise there will be no more order and security,” Kurz told tabloid daily Oesterreich.
Chancellor Christian Kern’s Social Democrats (SPO) are in coalition with Kurz’s OVP but Kurz ended the alliance when he took over his party in May, forcing yesterday’s snap election.
Opinion polls show the conservatives ahead with about a third of the vote and a tight race for second between the SPO and the FPO, whose candidate nearly won last year’s presidential election.
Immigration has dominated the campaign. Kurz plans to cap benefits for refugees at well below the general level and bar other foreigners from receiving such payments until they have lived in the country for five years.
He also says he wants to shake up Austrian politics, which for decades has been dominated by a coalition.
His opponents say he is merely a new face on a party that has been in power in various coalitions for 30 years.
Leaders of all three top parties warned voters to be sceptical about polling in a bid to improve turnout. “You should not pay attention to opinion polls. You should instead go by the atmosphere here,” FPO leader Heinz-Christian Strache told cheering supporters in Vienna on Saturday.
The FPO has accused Kurz of copying its ideas and Strache called him an “impersonator”.
The SPO was hit two weeks ago by a smear scandal that forced their chairman to step down. The election winner will form a government that will probably require a coalition with one of the two other main parties.
With Kurz and Kern at loggerheads the FPO could play kingmaker. Three smaller parties are polling between 4% – which is the threshold for entering parliament – and 6%. A final count was expected later in the evening, though large numbers of postal ballots could mean final results come in today.