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How the Kurz era weighs on Karl Nehammer

2022-12-13T15:29:17.238Z


The Sebastian Kurz era still weighs heavily on Austria's conservatives. Chancellor Nehammer is becoming increasingly unpredictable. How long will this be good?


One of those pretty words that is used in Austria but rarely heard outside the country is "aufpudeln".

According to the Duden, it means something like "acting on", also "upset, indignant".

In the past few days, Karl Nehammer has gotten worked up: the Chancellor and his party friend and Interior Minister Gerhard Karner blocked the expansion of the Schengen area to include Romania and Bulgaria.

The background is the approximately 100,000 migrants who entered Austria irregularly this year.

The conservative Nehammer announced that they wanted to stop "asylum tourism" - and thus positioned themselves at least rhetorically in the vicinity of the right-wing parties FPÖ and AfD.

The Kurz legacy weighs heavily on the ÖVP

In Europe, the Vienna veto caused disbelief and anger, Romania's foreign minister even publicly accused the Austrian interior minister of lying.

Alone against Brussels, that's a pose that the Hungarian Viktor Orbán in particular celebrates again and again.

The international damage to Austria's reputation should not be underestimated.

However, the tiny trains in Vienna can only be understood if one considers the accompanying domestic political circumstances.

In a few weeks there will be state elections in the ÖVP heartland of Lower Austria, which the conservatives absolutely want to win.

But so far there is a risk of a hefty minus of possibly ten percentage points and more.

In addition to the catastrophic poll numbers across Austria, it is the era of Nehammer's predecessor Sebastian Kurz that has recently shaped the behavior of the ÖVP - and is making it increasingly unpredictable:

  • The chancellor failed to create distance between Kurz and those around him, who were suspected of corruption – a half-hearted attempt in late autumn can be counted as a failure.

  • Nehammer made Kurz-Intimus Gerald Fleischmann the head of communications for the ÖVP.

    Should the corruption investigations bring further incriminating facts to light, the party and chancellor would also be damaged.

  • Nehammer's surprising Schengen veto and his right-wing populist rhetoric about refugees are recipes from the Kurz era.

  • The Court of Auditors accuses the ÖVP of breaking the campaign limit of seven million euros during the last parliamentary election campaign in 2019.

    The cause burdens Nehammer personally: He led the campaign for Kurz at the time.

    As general secretary, he hiked with the Kurz-traffic on its well-attended “uphill” tours.

For Nehammer, the short legacy is like a single downhill tour.

The legacy of the short reign, which lasted less than four and a half years, weighs heavily on the conservatives and their chancellor, and the inheritance is now weighing tons.

It won't get any easier in the coming weeks and months either: in Vienna, further revelations, new incriminating chats and further steps by the corruption prosecutor's office are expected.

The Greens are sticking to the coalition so far, but are following the behavior of the Christian Socialists with growing concern and shaking their heads.

Meanwhile, some conservatives are toying with the idea of ​​relaunching the unpopular grand coalition after new elections.

Then the Chancellery would probably go to the SPÖ, but the ÖVP would have saved itself as a junior partner in the government.

Perhaps even more is possible from the ÖVP point of view, since the Schengen question is dividing social democracy.

The SPÖ chairwoman Pamela Rendi-Wagner surprisingly took Nehammer's side - a move that sparked a furor among many comrades.

Should there be early elections in the next few months, the SPÖ would have a weakened chancellor candidate.

Social media tip of the week:

The comedy duo Maschek put new music to political videos in the ORF program »Welcome Austria«, now on the subject of Schengen.

In the most recent video, Nehammer and Orbán are put all sorts of things in their mouths.

The general fixation on migration meanwhile makes the exultant FPÖ leader Herbert Kickl dream of the chancellorship.

Stories we recommend you today:

  • Young, bourgeois, pragmatic, loyal to the line: Portrait of the ÖVP hopes Claudia Plakolm and Florian Tursky 

  • »Nehammer lets Orbán and Vučić show him«: Migration researcher Judith Kohlenberger in an interview

  • Kitzbühel, the sold-out city: Podcast »Inside Austria«

  • Full steam ahead in Vienna: report from the top gastronomy 

Sending best regards

Oliver Das Gupta

Source: spiegel

All news articles on 2022-12-13

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