(29 Sep 2024)
RESTRICTION SUMMARY:
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Vienna – 29 September 2024
++PLEASE NOTE CONTAINS JUMPCUTS++
1. Various of people entering and leaving polling station after voting, includes zoom in and out
STORYLINE:
Polls opened in the Austrian elections on Sunday, with the country’s far-right Freedom Party hoping to win for the first time by tapping into voters’ anxieties about immigration, inflation, Ukraine and other concerns, following recent gains for the hard right elsewhere in Europe.
Herbert Kickl, a former interior minister and long-time campaign strategist who has led the Freedom Party since 2021, wants to become Austria’s new chancellor.
He has used the term “Volkskanzler,” or chancellor of the people, which was used by the Nazis to describe Adolf Hitler in the 1930s.
Kickl has rejected the comparison.
But to achieve that, he would need a coalition partner to command a majority in the lower house of parliament.
And a win isn’t certain, with recent polls pointing to a close race.
They have put support for the Freedom Party at 27%, with the conservative Austrian People’s Party of Chancellor Karl Nehammer on 25% and the center-left Social Democrats on 21%.
Still, Kickl has achieved a turnaround since Austria’s last election in 2019.
In June, the Freedom Party narrowly won a nationwide vote for the first time in the European Parliament election, which also brought gains for other European far-right parties.
The far right has tapped into voter frustration over high inflation, the Russian military campaign in Ukraine and the COVID pandemic.
It also been able to build on worries about migration.
In its election programme, the Freedom Party calls for “remigration of uninvited foreigners,” and for achieving a more “homogeneous” nation by tightly controlling borders and suspending the right to asylum via an “emergency law.”
The Freedom Party also calls for an end to sanctions against Russia, is highly critical of western military aid to Ukraine and wants to bow out of the European Sky Shield Initiative, a missile defence project launched by Germany.
The leader of the Social Democrats, a party that led many of Austria’s post-World War II governments, has positioned himself as the polar opposite to Kickl.
Andreas Babler — who is also mayor of the town of Traiskirchen, home to the country’s biggest refugee reception center — has ruled out governing with the far right and labelled Kickl “a threat to democracy.”
While the Freedom Party has recovered, the popularity of Nehammer’s People’s Party, which currently leads a coalition government with the environmentalist Greens as junior partners, has declined since 2019.
During the election campaign, Nehammer portrayed his party, which has taken a tough line on immigration in recent years.
But it is precisely these crises, ranging from the COVID-19 pandemic to Russia’s military campaign of Ukraine and resulting rising energy prices, that have cost the conservatives support, said experts.
Under their leadership, Austria has experienced high inflation averaging 4.2% over the past 12 months, surpassing the EU average.
The government also angered many Austrians in 2022 by becoming the first European country to introduce a coronavirus vaccine mandate, which was scrapped a few months later without ever being put into effect.
And Nehammer is the third chancellor since the last election, taking office in 2021 after predecessor Sebastian Kurz — the winner in 2019 — quit politics amid a corruption investigation.
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