Austrian government collapses as far right leader caught in video sting

[WestVirginiaRebel]

Reuters

VIENNA (Reuters) - Austria raced on Saturday toward a snap election as Chancellor Sebastian Kurz pulled the plug on his coalition with the far right after its leader was caught on video offering to fix state contracts with a woman posing as a Russian oligarch’s niece.

The far-right Freedom Party’s Heinz-Christian Strache resigned as vice chancellor and party leader after the video was released by two German news organizations. He acknowledged that the video was “catastrophic” but denied breaking the law.

Kurz, a conservative who formed a coalition with the Freedom Party a year and a half ago, said the apparent video sting, in which Strache discusses contracts in return for financial or political favors, was the last straw in the relationship.

“After yesterday’s video I honestly have to say - enough is enough,” Kurz said in a statement to the media, listing various lesser scandals that had previously strained their relations.

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No fake Russians for him, please...

[Valin]

OTOH

Populists poised to make major gains in European elections

Paul Mirengoff

May 19, 2019

European parliamentary elections will take place on May 26. I’m old enough to remember the early elections in which my wife’s socialist cousin refused to vote on the grounds that the EU had no power and the elections didn’t matter.

Ah, the good old days.

Nowadays, the EU has vast power, so the elections are not so easily dismissed. However, it’s possible that the results of this election might cause the EU to lose some of its power over member countries.

That possibility is discussed with some alarm in this New York Times report by Steven Erlanger. Once we get past Erlander’s snark and derision of populists and their concerns, we learn that populist candidates might win almost one-fourth of the seats in the new parliament.

(Snip)

However, if the populists gain significant influence, the result won’t be “the Europe of Orban.” France won’t adopt the policies of Hungary, but Hungary may have more freedom to reject policies imposed on it by France and Germany.

Or maybe not. As Janis Emmanouilidis, a Europe expert from the Brussels-based European Policy Centre, boasts: “The EU has displayed considerable resilience in the past, and that will also be the case in the future.”

That’s a nice way of saying that elections don’t matter much to the EU. It keeps forging ahead with its grand designs no matter what voters say.

Maybe, my wife’s cousin’s conclusion still applies, though her reasoning does not. Maybe European parliamentary elections don’t mean that much, after all.