Inside Austria: Secret chats, intrigue and corruption

There could

to start our new Inside Austria newsletter: The extent of the current scandal is still hard to grasp.

- the Vienna business and corruption prosecutor accuses Kurz and nine other people of embezzlement, bribery and corruption.

A new Federal Chancellor,

since Monday

- and the big questions are now:

Or what comes next on the part of the investigators, will the new committee of inquiry uncover even more allegations?

What does what has already become known say about the political culture in Austria?

And what does it actually mean that the criticism of Kurz is increasing in the ÖVP?

The consequences of this matter will occupy Austria for a long time to come.

What does this newsletter offer?

We want to

write

. The special thing about it is: The newsletter is a co-production of the German SPIEGEL and the Austrian daily newspaper DER STANDARD, it is aimed at an Austrian as well as a German audience. Journalists from the two editorial offices and from both countries will in future take a joint look at what is happening in Austria, from an internal and an external perspective:

are to be combined here.

In the future you will mainly read the domestic policy heads of STANDARD: Michael Völker, Katharina Mittelstaedt and Fabian Schmid.

As well as the Vienna correspondent of SPIEGEL, Walter Mayr, and the German journalist and Austria expert Oliver Das Gupta, who works for both media.

We believe that our two editorial teams are compatible when looking at Austrian topics and that they reinforce each other - we look forward to your feedback!

From Saturday: a joint Austria podcast

Enlarge image

In addition, from next Saturday, October 16, we will start

, also called Inside Austria, and the first episodes of which deal with the

- and with its provisional end.

Sandra Sperber from SPIEGEL and Zsolt Wilhelm from STANDARD reconstruct the entire history of the "System Kurz" using hundreds of pages of confidential investigation files that are available to both editorial offices.

You can already listen to the trailer, you can subscribe to the podcast free of charge on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or any other player.

That's what it's all about in a nutshell

The moral picture that appears in the chats around Sebastian Kurz is shocking.

It allows outsiders to look into a

that evidently had no qualms about clearing the way to power with bought reporting and manipulated surveys; the presumption of innocence naturally applies. However, the chats read like a play - what it shows is a state affair for many Austrians - and perhaps an even bigger shock for non-Austrians:

What was hidden behind the facade is not only morally shattering.

A nexus of media, politics and marketability reveals itself, which - if the allegations were to be correct - would be in contradiction to a functioning democracy.

One thing is clear: the Austrian

advertisements invites abuse: 200 million euros are given to media companies in this way, without clear criteria, ultimately arbitrarily.

It would be as if the Federal Ministry of Finance in Berlin, for example, were placing large numbers of advertisements in »Bild« or in SPIEGEL, with the clear expectation of positive reporting.

Fortunately, that is unthinkable.

And it is to be hoped that Austrian media funding will now also be fundamentally reformed.

• Here you can read the most important questions and answers about the Kurz case

The social media moment of the week

In my opinion, we have a clear winner: It is the clip of a key scene that is widely distributed on Twitter: NEOS party chairwoman Beate Meinl-Riesinger demonstratively hands over the 104 pages of the search warrant to the new Federal Chancellor Alexander Schallenberg in parliament - and he adds them Floor.

The sequel also followed on Twitter: Here Schallenberg apologized to a certain extent on his new account for what he had done - a clear change in style from the previous one, which was hardly ever sorry in public.

Stories we recommend to you:

In Austria,

: "The State Affair".

Here you can read the entire scope of the Kurz case again - what it is actually about: »Did a mafia-like system of politics and media help make Sebastian Kurz Austrian Chancellor?

Internal documents trace the questionable means by which he and his followers came to power, according to investigators. "

• SPIEGEL title: The short system

Former Chancellor

- and told how he talked to the ÖVP boss Reinhold Mitterlehner, who was sawed off by Kurz, about this “remarkable time in our life”;

as it were, two victims briefly among themselves.

Kern says of his election campaign against Kurz: "There are individual newspapers that were part of the campaign, they were part of the short camp and they behaved like that."

• Interview with ex-Chancellor Christian Kern: "Short will soon be history" (SPIEGEL)

• Kern: "Sobotka was the wrecking ball" ("Standard")

The air for Kurz is getting thinner due to new chats available to “Standard” and SPIEGEL:

that he never had anything to do with filling the head of the Öbag state holding company.

This strengthens the suspicion of false statements before the Ibiza investigative committee, which is why a separate investigation is being carried out against Kurz.

A curious side aspect: of all people, Sebastian Kurz's partner, as an employee of the Austrian Ministry of Finance, booked the state advertisements in the newspaper »Austria«, which are now the subject of the investigation against Kurz & Co.

• »Standard«: New chats are charged to Kurz if false statements are suspected

An

: Briefly pulls on party colleagues, thwarts government work;

the documents show a Sebastian Kurz who was unknown.

He stumbled over it.

• In short and the state affair in Austria: "That certainly bothers the ass the most"

From now on, our newsletter appears every Monday, you can subscribe to it at SPIEGEL and STANDARD.

We would be glad.

Kind regards from Hamburg,

Your Mathieu von Rohr

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