The far-right Freedom Party has won the general election in Austria.
Led by Herbert Kickl, a former interior minister who was dismissed over the country’s Ibiza scandal, the party finished first ahead of the ruling conservatives, with the centre-left Social Democrats in third place.
However, despite this, the party’s chances of actually governing remain unclear.
Preliminary official results showed the Freedom Party finishing with 29.2% of the vote, Chancellor Karl Nehammer’s Austrian People’s Party second with 26.5% and the Social Democrats with 21%, according to a near-complete count reported by national public broadcaster ORF.
The outgoing government, a coalition of Mr Nehammer’s party and the Greens, lost its majority in the lower house of parliament.
Mr Kickl has said he wants to be chancellor, but to become Austria’s new leader he would need a coalition partner and rivals have said they will not work with him in government.
He has also drawn criticism for his use of the term “Volkskanzler,” or chancellor of the people, which was used by the Nazis to describe Adolf Hitler in the 1930s.
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Mr Kickl has rejected the comparison.
The party has tapped into anxieties around immigration, inflation, COVID, and the war in Ukraine and its strong performance follows recent gains for the far right elsewhere in Europe.
In its election programme, called Fortress Austria, the Freedom Party called for the “remigration of uninvited foreigners” to achieve a more “homogenous” nation.
The party also calls for an end to sanctions against Russia, is highly critical of Western military aid to Ukraine, and wants to leave the European Sky Shield Initiative – a missile defence project launched by Germany.
In his closing campaign speech on Saturday, Mr Kickl claimed sanctions against Moscow over its invasion of Ukraine were hurting Austria even more than Russia.
Speaking separately alongside other party leaders on ORF, he said: “We don’t need to change our position, because we have always said that we’re ready to lead a government, we’re ready to push forward this change in Austria side by side with the people.”
Mr Nehammer described Mr Kickl as a “security risk” for the country.
Along with other political leaders, he has said he would not form a coalition with Mr Kickl.
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If the Freedom Party is unable to form a government, an alternative could be an alliance between the People’s Party and the Social Democrats – with or without the liberal Neos, who took 9% of the vote.
After the Ibiza affair in 2019, 55-year-old Herbert Kickl became leader of the FPO in 2021.
During the coronavirus pandemic, Mr Kickl attended anti-lockdown protests and called Israel’s mass vaccination campaign “health apartheid”.
He also refused to condemn those who likened lockdown measures to the Holocaust, despite Austria’s strict laws against antisemitism.
He rubbished claims that those making the comparison were trivialising the Nazi regime during an interview with Austrian news outlet ORF.
And in March last year, he and other FPO members left the Austrian parliament when Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy addressed the chamber.
The far-right victory in Austria comes after similar successes elsewhere in Europe.
Dutch far-right leader Geert Wilders, whose party dominates the Netherlands’ new government, congratulated the Freedom Party on social media.
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As did co-leader of the Alternative for Germany Party (AfD), Alice Weidel, whose party won recent state elections for the first time.
