Sebastian Kurz — the 31-year-old leader of the Austrian People’s Party (ÖVP) — is set to lead a right-leaning coalition that includes the far-right Freedom Party. The last time Austria’s populists won more than a quarter of the vote and played kingmaker, in 1999, the other EU members isolated Vienna through bilateral sanctions. But what shocked EU leaders then is barely causing a stir now.
In part, this is simply because the inclusion of the far right is not as shocking as it was 20 years ago. Since then, governments across Europe — from Hungary to Italy — have turned rightward and a host of mainstream political leaders have adopted anti-immigrant rhetoric in an effort to keep the political fringes at bay. [...]
Sebastian Kurz’s campaign rhetoric was barely distinguishable from that of far-right FPÖ leader Heinz-Christian Strache, according to Ruth Wodak, a veteran discourse analyst of the far right. In his speeches and statements, the young ÖVP leader referred only to “migrants” and chose not to mention those fleeing persecution and deserving protection under asylum law. [...]
The next Austrian government may be unlikely to go the way of Hungary — where the government used a referendum in 2016 to spend an unprecedented amount of public money on a campaign against migration that caused public support for asylum to drop by half. But a new spate of referendums in Austria could slow down EU decision-making and block progress in Brussels.
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