The Brussels elite is celebrating this result – but the joy will be fleeting | Politics | News

Earlier this week, Austrian President Alexander Van der Bellen asked the leader of the conservative People’s Party (ÖVP) and incumbent Chancellor Karl Nehammer to form the next government. This is despite the fact that the nationalist Freedom Party (FPÖ) won last month’s elections with almost a third of the vote, while the ÖVP received just over 25 percent.

FPÖ leader Herbert Kickl believes he should be the next chancellor, but all other parties have ruled out working with him because he and his troops are not only anti-immigrant, but also far too sympathetic towards Russia.

For FPO supporters, however, this feels like a classic clash with the establishment, as the ÖVP is already in coalition negotiations with the left-leaning Social Democrats after being offered the opportunity by a president allied with the Greens.

But the tide is turning decisively in favor of nationalism and strong borders across Europe: Giorgia Meloni is in power in Italy, Geert Wilders’ party in the Dutch coalition, Poland’s Donald Tusk rejects the right to asylum and even French Prime Minister Michel Barnier this calls for an immigration moratorium. Marine Le Pen will also come first in a future French presidential election.

Regardless of whether Kickl is considered controversial or not, the decision to ostracize him could radicalize his base and further strengthen the FPÖ’s support. As with Wilders, it might have been wiser to find a way to accommodate the nationalists rather than shutting them out completely.

Of course, given Austria’s history as the birthplace of Adolf Hitler, the sensitivities are perhaps not surprising. Nevertheless, the FPO is not a new party, but an established one, and this appears to be a decision that is likely to cause problems in the future.

If there is one thing that unites the nationalist right, it is the feeling that democracy has been undermined by establishment machinations on issues such as immigration and political correctness.

The expulsion of last month’s election winner may feel like a victory for mainstream parties in Austria, but it could inadvertently fan the very flames that sparked the FPO’s success in the first place.

We live in a world in which Donald Trump – who has been the Republican US presidential candidate three times in almost a decade – is in a neck-and-neck race with the Democratic vice president with just days until the election.

We live in a time when the EU is implementing new, radical measures to protect against illegal migration. Italy is moving its asylum seekers to nearby Albania just as Sir Keir Starmer ended Britain’s somewhat tricky Rwanda program.

The times when Chancellor Angela Merkel denounced illegal border crossings are long gone. But the Austrian establishment may not have gotten that memo.

There will undoubtedly be loud cheers in Brussels at this expulsion from the FPÖ. But the forces that propelled the FPO to the top have gone nowhere.