Conservative shift in Austria opens path to power for far right

Vienna : Austria’s shift to the right in a parliamentary election has paved the way for young conservative star Sebastian Kurz to become the next leader and opened a path for the resurgent far right to return to power.
The People’s Party, which named 31-year-old Foreign Minister Kurz its leader only in May, secured a clear victory on Sunday with a hard line on immigration that left little space between it and the anti-Islam Freedom Party (FPO).
A coalition with the FPO is far from certain, but with Kurz’s party short of a majority it is the most likely outcome.That prospect prompted guarded expressions of concern from European leaders including Germany’s Angela Merkel, who said the FPO’s strong showing was a “big challenge” for other parties in Austria.Kurz has been careful to avoid saying which coalition partner he might favour. He has said any partner must be pro-European, without saying whether that rules out the FPO, which is critical of the bloc but no longer argues against membership.
His party’s manifesto calls for a smaller European Commission and a streamlined EU that focuses on “core competences” such as internal trade and securing the bloc’s external borders. But he declined to be drawn on specific plans.
Austria’s shift to the right came after German voters last month punished Merkel’s open-door policy for migrants, pushing her conservative bloc to its worst showing since 1949 and putting the far-right AfD party in parliament. The FPO was founded by former Nazis in the 1950s and went from minnow to political heavyweight in the 1990s under the charismatic Joerg Haider.