President eyeing September vote

BERLIN — Austria’s president said the first few days of September would be the best time to hold an early election after a covert video scandal shook up the country’s politics and warned that the government needed to remain capable of taking part in important European Union decisions in the interim.

President Alexander Van der Bellen spoke Sunday after meeting with Chancellor Sebastian Kurz.

Kurz called for a new election after the resignation Saturday of his vice chancellor, Heinz-Christian Strache, who apologized for his statements in a video where he was apparently offering government construction contracts to a purported Russian investor at a boozy gathering in Ibiza. The video from 2017 was published by two German media outlets.

After the scandal broke, Kurz decided not to continue the governing coalition between his centerright People’s Party and Strache’s anti-immigration Freedom Party, saying he was fed up with missteps by his coalition partner. Those have included a poem in a party newsletter comparing migrants to rats.

In the videos, Strache appeared to discuss ways to receive unreported campaign contributions and how the investor, purportedly the niece of a Russian oligarch, could buy a stake in a major Austrian newspaper and use it to support his party. The 49-year-old politician said he had been set up through illegal surveillance, but conceded his behavior had been “stupid, irresponsible and a mistake.”