Austrian conservatives led by Sebastian Kurz reached a coalition deal with the far-right Freedom Party on Friday, paving the way for Austria to become the only western European country with such a party in government.
The agreement, two months after a parliamentary election, ends more than a decade in opposition for the Freedom Party (FPO), which last entered government in 2000 with the People’s Party (OVP) that Kurz now leads.
Kurz’s party won the October 15 election with a hard line on immigration that often overlapped with the Freedom Party’s. The FPO came third with 26 percent of the vote.
“We can inform you that there is a turquoise-blue agreement,” Kurz said in a joint statement to reporters with FPO leader Heinz-Christian Strache, referring to their two parties by their colours.
Strache and Kurz said the details of their deal would be made public on Saturday, after a meeting with President Alexander Van der Bellen and discussions with their parties’ leadership structures.
A person familiar with the talks said before Friday’s announcement that the far-right party was poised to secure the Interior, Foreign and Defence Ministries.
In October, the head of Austria’s Jewish community issued a warning to the OVP and Social Democrats (SPO) against working with the far-right FPO.
“When the nationalist wolf puts on a blue sheep skin it does not change its nature, only its appearance,” said Oskar Deutsch, head of Austria’s main Jewish association and the country’s EJC affiliate, in an open letter on Facebook to both centrist parties.
“If OVP and SPO believe they can tame the wolf, they are deceiving themselves,” Deutsch said.
Founded by former Nazis six decades ago, the Freedom Party long ago left the political fringes to establish itself as a mainstream party.
Strache insists that antisemites have no place in today’s FPO, which routinely has to expel members who step over the line. He has visited the Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial in Jerusalem and has called antisemitism a crime.
“[The FPO] make scapegoats of people who think and look differently,” Deutsch said, adding that “almost daily” there were racist and antisemitic incidents.
“Symbolic visits to Israel cannot conceal all this. Austria’s Jewish community will not whitewash [this].”
When the FPO last entered government under the late Joerg Haider, who praised Hitler’s employment policies, other EU countries imposed sanctions on Vienna in protest. There is unlikely to be a similar outcry this time, given the rise of anti-establishment parties across the continent.
