Austria: From Chancellor to Shadow Chancellor

Austria’s ruling party ÖVP describes the resignation of Chancellor Kurz as a step to the side. The opposition and party friends assume that Kurz is speculating on a return to the Chancellery.

The government in Vienna can continue – as before, with a turquoise-green majority in parliament. Above all, the Greens still have a lot to do: budget, ecologically influenced tax reform, the permanent financing of the “climate ticket”, of which the green climate protection minister is so proud: a network card for almost 1000 euros a year, for all “public transport”, regardless of whether Railjet (the Austrian ICE) or subway. The first talks – Green Vice Chancellor with the proposed Chancellor successor Alexander Schallenberg – are already being held.

Will you continue to govern as before?

Can the government continue as before the Kurz resignation? The government crisis has shaken the country. Not a state crisis, as Federal President Alexander van der Bellen tried to calm down, but once again a moral image of Austria had been drawn that “is not good for democracy.”

The Green Vice Chancellor Kogler had demanded – and achieved – that someone else soon be sitting in the Federal Chancellery in Vienna. An “impeccable person”. It is said to be Alexander Schallenberg, the previous Foreign Minister, diplomat, confidante of Sebastian Kurz, but far removed from the “corruption of advertisements”, the practices that the Corruption Prosecutor accuses the “Team Kurz” of: manipulated opinion polls and courtesy reports on it, in the big tabloids, bought with tax money for advertisements worth millions in these same papers.

No change of course by the ÖVP

A change of role, but not a change of course. Chancellor successor Schallenberg, for example, is pursuing the same sharp course in migration policy. And: Kurz is not gone. He becomes the head of the ÖVP parliamentary group and, as such, sits on the Council of Ministers. And he remains the ÖVP party leader. “Shadow Chancellor” mocks the SPÖ chairwoman. You – in the opposition – could have imagined other alliances. Even hard to digest: SPÖ, GREEN, liberal NEOs with the right-wing populist FPÖ. The main thing: all against short. Kurz anticipated this with his resignation. He also overturned the planned motion of censure in parliament.

One step to the side

One is relieved in the ÖVP. The wall was built demonstratively around the popular chairman that the ÖVP was one hundred percent behind Kurz. But the wall quickly cracked. You have to read the pierced investigation files carefully, it said. It contains chats and text messages in which former party leaders of the ÖVP are sometimes referred to as “ass” by the closest employees of the shooting star, in the middle of the ÖVP’s internal power struggle in 2016. Kurz is now embarrassing itself. That was partly “written in the heat of the moment”, he says today, if he no longer wrote it like that. “But I’m just a person with emotions and mistakes.” Forgive? But certainly don’t forget.

In short, the ÖVP delivered, meanwhile, delivered “its” ÖVP: brilliant electoral victories, the Federal Chancellery. That has protected him so far. The party has now found the formula for changing roles: “Step to the side”. As group leader and chairman, he is a little less in the limelight, but not really in the second row. He can also determine who takes which position in the ÖVP and who does not.

Sebastian Kurz – now head of the ÖVP parliamentary group

The opposition is demonstratively surprised and ridiculed. A “shadow chancellor” is short, says the SPÖ chairwoman Pamela Rendi-Wagner. And the parliamentary group and party leader of the liberal NEOs, Beate Meinl-Reisinger, asks aloud: She would have thought that a parliamentary group leader should also be “an impeccable person”. An allusion to the wording of the Green Party leader Kogler, who combined the threat of breaking the coalition with the demand that an “impeccable person” should sit in the Chancellery. So not Kurz, whom the Corruption Prosecutor’s Office leads as a suspect, whereby the presumption of innocence applies.

Kurz is coming back to the Chancellery soon?

That is still excruciatingly long. According to experts, it will take until next year, 2022, until it is clear: Will charges be brought or proceedings closed – and which ones? In addition to Kurz, nine others are under suspicion, including some of his closest employees. That is how long the “step to the side” should take, even if the first ÖVP minister, Elisabeth Köstinger, responsible for agriculture and tourism, is already tweeting that she is sure that Kurz will “soon be able to return to office as Federal Chancellor” if she is against him allegations raised by the public prosecutor’s office for corruption have been clarified. Briefly, therefore, should be due to a quick clarification. The ÖVP counters the accusation of his former coalition partner, the right-wing populist FPÖ, that he is only taking refuge in the protective “immunity” as a member of parliament: Kurz himself will apply for his immunity to be lifted in order to enable further investigations, faster.