Vienna: Austria’s conservative and far-right parties reached an agreement to form a new government on Friday, expanding the list of European governments with populist or nationalist tendencies.
Sebastian Kurz, the 31-year-old chief of the conservative People’s Party (OeVP), said the coalition pact aims to lower taxes, and to strengthen Austria as an economic hub.
“And most importantly, we want to make Austria safer. This will include fighting irregular migration,” he told reporters.
Kurz is set to become Europe’s youngest head of government. Heinz-Christian Strache, leader of the right-wing populist Freedom Party (FPOe), will serve as vice chancellor.
Kurz’s OeVP won the October elections after adopting FPOe positions on curbing immigration.
“In the last election, Austrians gave us a clear mandate to take problems in our country seriously, to listen, and to halt bad trends that had developed over the past years,” Strache said.
The leaders did not present the details of their coalition agenda and their cabinet lineup on Friday, as the leadership committees of both parties have yet to give their formal approval on Saturday.
The cabinet is set to be sworn in early next week.
However, OeVP and FPOe have announced a few of their planned policies in recent weeks. They include cutting welfare for refugees and separate elementary school classes for migrant children who do not yet speak German.
In addition, they want to repeal a strict smoking ban for restaurants and bars that was scheduled to come into force next year.
The coalition has also promised tax breaks for families with children.
The FPOe has been demanding to fill the interior, defence and foreign ministry posts, and it has already presented the independent Middle East policy analyst Karin Kneissl as its choice for chief diplomat.
The OeVP’s win in the recent election relegated the Social Democrats to second place, ending the coalition between these two parties that had grown increasingly fraught in the past few years.
The FPOe, which made electoral gains in October, has previously been a junior partner in coalition cabinets in 1986-87 and 2000-05.
Right-wing populist and national-conservative parties are currently represented in several governments in the European Union, namely in Bulgaria, Finland, Greece, Hungary, Latvia, Poland and Slovakia. — dpa
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