Austria may be headed for snap elections after the center-right government stumbled over a video showing the vice chancellor promising government contracts in return for campaign funding.
The ball is in the court of conservative Chancellor Sebastian Kurz after Vice Chancellor Heinz-Christian Strache, from the nationalist Freedom Party, stepped down on Saturday, calling his own actions “dumb†and “embarrassing.†Kurz is set to give a statement later in the day.
The 17-month-old coalition could continue if Kurz accepts Infrastructure Minister Norbert Hofer instead of Strache, according to local media, who said possible snap elections wouldn’t happen before September.
The chancellor has already been the subject of rearguard actions by members of his People’s Party who objected to the 32-year-old leader’s adoption of nationalist rhetoric around immigration and welfare. That raises the question of whether Kurz will try to keep governing with the Freedom Party.
“For Kurz, to go on with Hofer would be a really risky game, because those issues with the Freedom Party won’t stop and he’s running the risk that it sticks to him,†said Thomas Hofer, a political analyst and consultant in Vienna.
The crisis is hitting Austria a week before European Parliament elections. Polls suggest Kurz’s People’s Party will win the most votes, followed by the opposition Social Democrats and the Freedom Party, which was expected to get four out of Austria’s 18 seats before this weekend.
The footage from a 2017 meeting in Ibiza with a woman who claimed to be the niece of a Russian oligarch was obtained by German weekly magazine Der Spiegel and daily newspaper Sueddeutsche Zeitung. The magazine didn’t disclose how it obtained the video and said it doesn’t know what the motives were of the people who made it.
Strache, speaking handing in his resignation to Kurz in Vienna on Saturday, confirmed the Ibiza meeting. He said he pointed out to the woman in the video that Austrian laws had to be obeyed, and that he never received donations from her or gave her any business.
The video was shot illegally and “this was a targeted attempt of political assassination, this was hired work,†Strache told reporters.
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Source: bloomberg.com
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