Scandal fells the vice-chancellor of Austria

MANY VISITORS to Ibiza do things they regret. But rarely do they involve dodgy discussions with wealthy Russians over procurement contracts and sales of stakes in newspapers. On May 18th Heinz-Christian Strache (pictured), the leader of Austria’s hard-right Freedom Party (FPÖ), resigned as the country’s vice-chancellor after a stunning exposé published overnight by German media suggested that he had been prepared to manipulate the Austrian state to help his party’s fortunes. “Enough is enough,” declared Sebastian Kurz, the chancellor, a few hours later, calling time on the government and announcing an early general election.

During a boozy evening at a rented villa on the Spanish island in July 2017, three months before an Austrian general election, Mr Strache and Johann Gudenus, an ally, met “Alyona Makarova”, a young woman who claimed to be the niece of a Russian oligarch, and a companion. Over champagne, sushi and copious amounts of Red Bull, Mr Strache appears to have offered to help his interlocutor gain access to juicy state highway contracts once he joined the government. In exchange, Ms Makarova would take a 50% stake in the Kronen Zeitung, a popular Austrian tabloid, and help reinvent it as an FPÖ mouthpiece. Such a turn, enthused Mr Strache, could lift his party’s support from 27% to 34%. On several occasions during the conversation Mr Strache vowed not to do anything illegal. But seven hours of footage, some of which has been made public, finds the FPÖ pair musing on the possibility of building a media landscape modelled on Hungary’s, thinking about ways to circumvent party-donation rules, and lamenting the West’s “decadence”—before decamping to a nightclub.

In fact the whole operation was an elaborate sting. At an emotional appearance before the press Mr Strache apologised for his “extremely embarrassing statements”, blaming “typical alcohol-fuelled macho posturing” and a desire to impress his “attractive hostess”. Yet he said he was resigning only to save the reputation of the government (in which the FPÖ had served as junior coalition partner to Mr Kurz’s People’s Party, or ÖVP), defiantly asserting that the only illegal action in Ibiza was the filming of his meeting. He hinted at dark conspiracies behind the operation.

The source of the set-up remains unclear. Whoever was behind it mounted a sophisticated operation, including the courting of Mr Gudenus before the meeting, the installation of cameras and microphones throughout the Ibiza apartment, and, after sitting on the footage for nearly two years, a leak to the German press that was presumably designed to harm Mr Strache in the run-up to next week’s European election. Der Spiegel and Süddeutsche Zeitung, the German publications that ran the story, say their source insists on anonymity.

Mr Strache’s political career is surely over. But Mr Kurz finds himself in a tricky spot. After inviting the FPÖ, a party with a long history of flirtation with neo-Nazism, to join the ÖVP in government in 2017, Mr Kurz promised anxious European allies that he could tame his coalition partner’s more extreme instincts. That proposition has lately been tested; some governments have halted intelligence co-operation with Austria amid concerns over the FPÖ-led interior ministry’s links with Russia, and a stream of mini-scandals has highlighted the extremism that the party still harbours in its ranks. Now Mr Strache’s antics have punched a giant hole in Mr Kurz’s argument that the best way to manage the far-right is to co-opt them. In the short term the ÖVP is well placed to fight an election. Mr Kurz remains personally popular, and the third force in Austria, the Social Democrats, have struggled in opposition. But forming a coalition without either may prove hard.

The scandal has also troubled Mr Strache’s friends outside Austria. Today Matteo Salvini, Italy’s deputy prime minister and the leader of its populist Lega party, held a large rally in Milan, flanked by Marine Le Pen and other avatars of Europe’s nationalist right, as part of a joint campaign for the European elections. A senior politician from the FPÖ had been due to join them, but had to cancel at the last minute. The usually loquacious Mr Salvini had nothing to say about his erstwhile ally.

See also:
The European Parliament elections are responding to a changed world (May 16th 2019)