Is Austria’s strange Coalition the New Model For Europe?

33-year-old Sebastian Kurz, the world’s youngest Head of State is set to be Chancellor of Austria for the second time after his conservative People’s Party won a landslide victory in October last year.

Kurz, also a chair of the Party, served as Chancellor from December 2017 to May 2019 until a parliamentary motion of no confidence ousted him in a scandal involving his coalition partner, the far right Freedom Party.

Now he is back with his reputation intact, reinventing himself and his party in the process through a historic, preliminary coalition agreement with the Greens.

Proportional representation is a hallmark of European democracy so coalition government is the norm, although these pairings normally occur along similar ideological lines inside the political left-right divide.

It is difficult to imagine how extreme environmental policies fit with conservative principles but Austrians do not appear fazed about this deal the way outsiders are; with Sebastian Kurz telling journalists, he does not see a problem with conservatives supporting environmentalism.

For their part, the Greens are happy with this unusual coalition; essentially, they are a fringe movement so this opportunity provides them a political platform.

It ties up with the Green Party manifesto of promoting proportional representation as the best democratic model because it provides minority parties a voice while extending its reach through the building of coalitions.

Taking the environmental issue out of the equation there is still the problem with the Greens priorities aligning with the far left over topics like socialist economic policies and open mass migration.

How then does this reconcile with a conservative outlook which is the antithesis and how would these differences play out are some of the questions that come to mind.

So what’s the Deal?

Meanwhile in Germany a grand coalition between Social Democrats and Conservatives has elicited mounting criticism, now political commentators are framing Austria’s new coalition agreement as a testing ground for a similar option in Berlin.

One source attributes these new alliances between conservatives and the left with the desire to bridge the gap between younger liberals who overwhelmingly support smaller liberal left groups and older conservatives who back the larger traditional parties, and in Austria’s case, probably align attitudes on the contentious subject of anthropogenic climate change.

Although it may have more to do with Angela Merkel advising Germans to shun far right groups politically, or avoid right-wing populism as she calls it, so maybe Kurz is just leading the way.

Austria joins fellow European Union states Sweden and Finland in having Greens in government, albeit in a junior role, at a time of growing calls for urgent action on man-made climate change.

In the election, Kurz’s People’s Party won 37.5 per cent of the vote while the Greens won 13.9 per cent translating into 4 out of 15 ministries controlling the environment, transport, infrastructure and energy.

The Greens have already said they want an investment package in environmental measures and to make products that damage the environment more expensive.

“On climate change we have possibly agreed on more than we could have imagined beforehand,” said Werner Kogler, leader of the Green Party and the new Vice Chancellor.

“Austria should become a European and international leader on climate change issues.”

Kurz has touted the coalition agreement as being the best of both worlds but just as it was with his first coalition deal with the Freedom Party when liberals called him an opportunist, so it is now with his detractors on the opposite side of the fence.

Details of the coalition plan will follow on Thursday.