Snap election ‘to be held this year’

Austria will hold a snap parliamentary election this year, Chancellor Christian Kern said on Sunday, as his foreign minister moved to take control of the main conservative party in their now moribund coalition. An election would give the far-right Freedom Party a good chance of entering national government less than a year after its candidate lost a close-fought presidential runoff. The FPO is leading in opinion polls, just ahead of Kern’s Social Democrats. But surveys also suggest the conservative People’s Party would leap ahead if Foreign Minister Sebastian Kurz took over as its leader, as he is widely expected to do.