The departure of Sebastian Kurz is another blow to the center right in Europe | Europe

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The ailing European center-right is mourning the departure of a second high-profile Conservative leader within a month, as Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Kurz announced he would resign over allegations he encouraged the use of public funds to buy himself positive media coverage. .

The fall from grace for the 35-year-old Austrian People’s Party (ÖVP) leader comes just weeks after his German sister party failed to fill the void left by outgoing Chancellor Angela Merkel, crashing to the worst result in his party. History in Federal Elections.

Supporters of the Austrian leader, who has long been hailed as an “anti-Merkel”, hope he will continue to pull the strings in his role as ÖVP chairman and leader of its parliamentary group after Alexander Schallenberg, Kurz’s long-standing and current ally. The foreign minister, takes over the chancellorship next week.

“What we need now are stable conditions,” Kurz told reporters in Vienna on Saturday, while Gohar denied the corruption allegations. “So, in order to end the stalemate, I want to make room to prevent chaos and ensure stability.”

The swift handover of power to Schallenberg is approaching an imminent no-confidence vote that would have removed Kurz’s party from power in favor of an ideologically penetrating national unity government between the Austrian Social Democratic Party (SPÖ) and the Greens and Liberals. News and the far-right Freedom Party.

By immediately switching to the back bench, Kurz would also gain parliamentary immunity – although Austrian daily Der Standard reported on Sunday that the outgoing chancellor would personally file the lifting of the special privilege until he could prove his innocence.

However, a quick return to power – which Kurz achieved, with an increasing majority, after the collapse of his coalition government with the far-right over the so-called Ibiza affair in 2019 – seems unlikely.

The allegations that led to the Austrian chancellor’s resignation surfaced for the first time last Wednesday after Austrian anti-corruption officers searched offices in Kurz’s Chancellery, the Finance Ministry, his party headquarters and one of the country’s most powerful media organizations.

Sebastian Kurz at a press conference Saturday when he announced his resignation. Photo: Xinhua/Rex/Shutterstock

Prosecutors suspect that a network of conservative politicians around Kurz used money from the Treasury to buy favorable press coverage, as well as to “finance partially manipulated opinion polls that serve the party’s exclusive political interest.”

Although prosecutors did not name specific newspapers, the owners of Ostrich newspaper last week issued a statement denying reports that included positive coverage of Kurz and his party in exchange for taxpayer money. Over the past two years, Österreich media group has reportedly received €1.33m (£1.13m) in return for advertisements placed by the Finance Ministry.

The tone of the text messages purportedly demonstrating Kurz’s awareness of these back deals shocked the Austrian public as much as their content, with the usually bland chancellor and his fellow political rivals calling “donkeys”.

Austrian President Alexander Van der Bellen on Friday criticized the “rhetoric of disrespect” towards individuals and state institutions. The Greens, a junior coalition partner in the current government, said Kurz was no longer fit to serve as chancellor.

On Saturday, Kurz said the letters were written “in the heat of battle” and taken out of context, saying the accusations against him were “false and I’ll be able to make that clear.”

The outgoing Austrian chancellor’s fall from grace was as swift as his rise to the upper echelons of the power structures of the Alpine Republic. After being appointed Minister of State for Integration Affairs at the age of 24, he rose to the Foreign Ministry at the age of 27, and became one of the world’s youngest democratically elected heads of government after leading the ÖVP to victory in elections in 2017.

He has reshaped the center-right party in his image since becoming party leader in May 2017, centralizing decision-making powers and changing its colors from traditional black to turquoise.

Kurz’s approach to the rise of a xenophobic populist group to his right contrasts with the strategy of the German Christian Democratic Union (CDU). While Angela Merkel’s party insisted on a “firewall” against the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD), Kurz chose the hardline immigration positions of the Freedom Party and entered into a power-sharing agreement with him in his first term.

As the CDU licks its wounds after the painful defeat on 26 September in the federal election, many German center-right voices have pointed to Kurz as a model for the party’s renewal. The head of the CDU’s youth movement demanded that “we need German Sebastian Kurz” just at the beginning of the month. After the events of the past week, such calls are rarely heard.

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