German and Austrian Govts Block Populist Parties’ Legitimate Participation

Austrian politics since the 1990s were often defined as stability through chaos. And yet, when Herbert Kickl, the leader of the Freedom Party of Austria (FPÖ) and winner of last September’s vote, announced that negotiations with the ÖVP had failed to produce a coalition agreement, the country was thrown into uncharted waters.

Five months had passed since Austrians had gone to the polls. The FPÖ, running on an unapologetically right-wing platform, personified by Kickl, its leader and candidate for the Chancellorship claimed the first place for the first time in its history, in a victory described as ‘historic’ in domestic and foreign media.

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A Little-Known Chancellor

The present coalition negotiations are already the longest-running since the end of the Second World War. In European capitals such as The Hague, Brussels, or even Berlin, a five month-long wait for a governing coalition is considered a nuisance, albeit one that is a necessary part of Parliamentary democracy.

In Vienna, such a long wait is unprecedented, and the meandering and arbitrariness displayed by several important actors throughout the process contributed to further eroding the already-damaged public trust in the political system. Discontent has contributed to both incensing the FPÖ’s base and to broadening it, mostly at the ÖVP’s expense. If in September Kickl’s party won 29 per cent of the votes, barely three points ahead of the ÖVP, the latest Opinion polls show that, should early elections be held, the FPÖ would be the preferred choice of at least 34 per cent of Austrian voters.

The incoming government, regardless of the policies it may pursue or the ministers it may nominate, is unlikely to restore Austrians’ faith in their mainstream parties. The optics of a government formed and led by the party that lost the most votes in last September’s election, with a mandate to shut off the election winner from power—notwithstanding their political collaboration at State-level in five out of the eight Austrian Länder—further adds to the new government’s popular legitimacy issues.

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Today’s Austria, however, is a different country from that of the famed mid-century political arrangements: politics has become more complex, voters less pillarized, and, most importantly, the formerly two-party system has now a third component—one that is both ideological enough to stand in stark opposition to the other two and pragmatic enough to collaborate when necessary. Stocker’s task to steer the three-party coalition and the government will be a complex one, and one where success is far from guaranteed. The FPÖ, emboldened by the electoral results, will be a combative opposition, seeking to capitalize on the coalition’s lack of unity around key issues such as migration and finances, to force an early election. Alea iacta est.

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Mainstream parties in Germany continue to ignore the will of millions of voters by upholding the anti-AfD firewall.

ZOLTAN KOTTASZ for EUROPEAN CONSERVATIVE

The right-wing Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) party will be denied the opportunity to gain a deputy speaker’s post in the German parliament, the Bundestag, despite being the second strongest party following the snap elections on February 23rd.

Friedrich Merz, the leader of the centre-right CDU, which won the elections, said he will instruct his party not to elect an AfD MP to public office. The left-wing parties are in agreement.

The inscription ‘To the German People’ on the tympanum of the colonnade of the historic building of the Bundestag in Berlin Photo: Pixabay

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This means that the AfD, which was formed in 2013, will again be denied the right to have an elected deputy speaker—as was the case following the 2017 and 2021 elections.

The behaviour of the establishment parties follows previous patterns: they are undemocratically defying Bundestag protocols and ignoring more than ten million German citizens who voted for the AfD.

The rules of the Bundestag clearly state that each parliamentary group “is represented by at least one deputy speaker,” but this is a rule that the ruling elites choose to ignore when dealing with the AfD, which they consider to be their biggest political rival.

Indeed, the party doubled its share of the votes compared to the elections four years ago, receiving 21%. The AfD has been consistently campaigning on a tough anti-immigration platform, and has called out the previous governments for their mismanagement of the German economy.

AfD parliamentary group leader Bernd Baumann called Friedrich Merz’s proposal “extremely undemocratic,” saying the CDU leader was trying to curry favour with the leftists. The CDU is currently in talks to form a coalition with the Social Democrats (SPD), and Merz—as an appeasement—has already made a U-turn on his campaign promise to be tough on immigration.

Unsurprisingly, the SPD praised Merz for sidelining the AfD, with party politician Ralf Stegner calling it “a right and wise” move.

The CDU has also joined forces with the Left in the European Parliament (EP) where last year they denied the third strongest group, the conservative-sovereignist Patriots for Europe leading positions in the Parliament’s governing bodies, including an EP vice-presidency.