After two months of negotiations, Austria has settled on a coalition government between its conservative People's Party (OVP) and the far-right Freedom Party (FPO). On Dec. 18, President Alexander Van der Bellen swore in the government, which will be led by OVP Chancellor Sebastian Kurz. And given the nationalist bent of the FPO, the new coalition could pose challenges to Austria's relationship with the European Union.
The results of parliamentary elections on Oct. 15 showed that right-wing populism is gaining favor among Austrian voters, with the far-right FPO garnering 26 percent of the vote, establishing itself as an important member of coalition negotiations. The center-right OVP won 31.5 percent of the vote, followed by the center-left Social Democratic Party of Austria (SPO) with 26.9 percent. And though the FPO's political views are relatively extreme, the party has been present in past ruling governments. Between 1983-1987, the party belonged to a coalition with the SPO, and between 2000-2007 it ruled with the OVP. In fact, in 2000, five years after Austria entered the European Union, its embrace of a far-right government shocked the bloc to such a degree that EU leaders imposed temporary diplomatic sanctions.
This time around, however, reactions to the OVP-FPO government have been much milder. The European Union didn't officially react to the announcement of the new Austrian government, and though European Commissioner Pierre Moscovici warned of having a far-right party in power in any member state, he recognized that Euroskepticism is more popular throughout the bloc than it was 17 years ago. Meanwhile, more critical reactions came from the German Social Democratic Party, the Italian government and the Turkish government. The latter is unsurprising, given that the FPO has expressed a desire to halt Turkey's EU accession talks.
Though the new Austrian government is in its early days, Kurz has already expressed that it will be pro-European Union and will remain aligned with the German government, just as the previous government was. As a nationalist party, the FPO wants to protect Austria's sovereignty, but its main political battle isn't against the European Union. In exchange for a hawkish government position on issues such as security and immigration, the FPO has agreed to tone down its anti-EU rhetoric and to abandon its campaign promise to hold a referendum on EU membership. Now, rather than openly opposing the union, the FPO is far more likely to promote protectionist economic policies and the defense of Europe's borders from illegal immigration.
Despite these concessions, the new Austrian government will still have to deal with divisions between the FPO and the more moderate OVP — especially once Austria takes over the rotating presidency of the Council of the European Union in the second half of 2018. Though Austria isn't expected to take any spectacular action against the European Union, the FPO could still resist plans of deeper EU integration.
Austria's new government will ultimately seek to maintain a balance between Euroskepticism and accommodation to the bloc. For example, it could increasingly cooperate with fellow countries in Central Europe like the members of the Visegrad Group (Poland, Czech Republic, Slovakia and Hungary), which tend to be skeptical about EU integration. But as a member of the eurozone, Austria will also remain committed to participating in debates about the future of the monetary union.
