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Coalition deal with far-right Freedom Party is a ‘slap in the face for Austrian Jews’
Political observers believe the state arrangement could be replicated at national level in the general election next year
March 23, 2023 11:05
Political observers believe the state arrangement could be replicated at national level in the general election next year
March 23, 2023 11:05 Austrian Jewish leaders have described the ruling centre-right People’s Party decision to go into coalition with a far-right party in a key state as a “slap in the face”.
The People’s Party (ÖVP) did a deal with the far-right Freedom Party (FPÖ) that will see the FPÖ’s Udo Landbauer become lieutenant governor of Lower Austria, the country’s largest state.
It followed regional elections in January that saw the ÖVP lose its absolute majority in the state as the FPÖ’s vote share rose by ten points. Then negotiations between the ÖVP and the centre-left Social Democratic Party (SPÖ) broke down.
Johanna Mikl-Leitner (Getty Images)
Political observers believe the deal could be replicated at national level in the general election next year. The People’s Party currently governs Austria with the Greens but poor polling figures mean the coalition is unlikely to last beyond 2024.
The People’s Party and Freedom Party previously formed government coalitions in 2000, 2002 and 2017.
Landbauer was forced to leave frontline politics in 2018 after it emerged that he had been a member of a greater German national student fraternity, the Burschenschaft Germania zu Wiener Neustadt, whose songbook contained antisemitic and racist lyrics as well as those glorifying National Socialism.
Lines from Germania’s songbook reference “the Jew Ben-Gurion”, “creating the seven million” with reference to the Holocaust, and wanting to join the Waffen-SS.
Landbauer gave up his leadership of the FPÖ in Lower Austria and his seat in the state parliament only to return to both posts a few months later.
In 2018, Lower Austria governor Johanna Mikl-Leitner of the People’s Party ruled out working with Landbauer following what became known as the “songbook affair”.
Landbauer is one of many members and former members of greater German nationalist student fraternities among the FPÖ’s upper echelons.
Udo Landbauer (Getty Images)
