Austrian party to get En Marche! makeover

THE 30-year-old politician who is forcing early elections in Austria is to remodel his party on the lines of Emmanuel Macron’s En Marche! movement.

Sebastian Kurz announced plans to scrap his People’s Party (ÖVP) constituency selection process and replace it with a list of independent candidates endorsed by the party.

The popular foreign minister was appointed leader of the ÖVP on Sunday after vowing to pull it out of Austria’s coalition government.

There are fears the move risks handing power to the far-right Freedom Party (FPÖ) less than six months after it narrowly missed winning the Austrian presidency. But Mr Kurz appears to be gambling that he can trade his personal popularity for electoral success.

He has announced plans to rebuild the ÖVP, one of the two parties to have run Austria since the war, in his own image.

“We have decided that we are starting a movement, that we value existing strengths within the People’s Party but at the same time we are bringing new people on board,” he told a press conference in Vienna.

Mr Kurz is clearly modelling himself on President Macron, another young politician who has torn up the existing order. The list of candidates for election will not only be branded as the “New People’s Party”, they will also carry Mr Kurz’s name – a controversial move in a country with a parliamentary rather than a presidential system.

The FPÖ is leading in the polls but a number of surveys have indicated that the ÖVP, now in third place, could overtake it under Mr Kurz. He has taken a populist stance on immigration, and been accused of trying to outflank the FPÖ with its rhetoric.