BERLIN — Austria’s chancellor called for snap elections after the country’s far-right vice chancellor resigned on Saturday over a secretly filmed video from 2017 that showed him promising government contracts to a woman claiming to be the niece of a Russian oligarch.
The episode renewed questions about whether Russia had a direct line into a government at the heart of the European Union.
“After yesterday’s video, enough is enough,” Chancellor Sebastian Kurz told a room packed with reporters on Saturday night in the capital Vienna. He said he had asked Austria’s president to hold a snap election “as soon as possible.”
The video was the worst in a series of missteps that threatened the stability of Austria’s governing coalition. It also raised concerns about whether Vice Chancellor Heinz-Christian Strache’s far-right Freedom Party had been actively working to undermine liberal democracy and media freedom in the country while helping conservative Chancellor Sebastian Kurz govern as the junior party in his coalition.
For weeks, opposition parties had called on Mr. Kurz to end his controversial coalition with the Freedom Party, with its well-documented links to far-right extremists and to Russia that have increasingly worried allies at home and abroad.
The scandal comes at an important political moment in the European Union. Across the Continent, far-right, populist leaders are campaigning hard before next week’s elections for the European Parliament and seem poised to increase their share in the chamber.
Many of Europe’s populists share the intentions of President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia to widen political divisions and weaken Western institutions.
Not long ago, these far-right parties were on the fringes of European politics. But like Austria’s Freedom Party, several are now part of coalition governments. Some populist leaders, particularly in the Scandinavian countries and Poland, are wary of Russia. But others are outspoken in their desire for closer ties to the Kremlin.
The Freedom Party has longstanding ties with Russia and a formal cooperation agreement with Mr. Putin’s United Russia party.
Without the Freedom Party, Mr. Kurz’s conservative party does not have a majority in Parliament.
The video of Mr. Strache’s meeting was filmed in a villa on the Spanish island of Ibiza three months before the 2017 Austrian elections in which Mr. Kurz led his conservative Austrian People’s Party to victory. It exposed in a raw fashion Mr. Strache’s apparent eagerness to help Russia with unethical promises for government contracts in exchange for donations to his party.
Apparently filmed without Mr. Strache’s knowledge, the footage was obtained and published on Friday by the German newsmagazine Der Spiegel and the newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung, two respected news outlets. The New York Times could not independently verify the contents of the entire video.
The motive and the timing of the recording’s release remained unknown. Der Spiegel has would not say how it had obtained the video, but confirmed that it knew the identity of its source.
But what is clear from excerpts from the video is the Freedom Party’s willingness to foster close links to Russia, even if in this case the meeting may have been a setup.
“The road to illiberal democracy — for some apparently a synonym for kleptocracy — was long planned,” Pamela Rendi-Wagner, the head of the opposition Social Democrats, said after the video was released. “The video shows everything, says everything and provides deep insight.”
The footage shows Mr. Strache and a Russian-speaking Freedom Party official smoking and drinking while talking to a woman who claims to be the niece of a Russian oligarch. When she offers to support the Freedom Party and invest 250 million euros, around $280 million, in Austria, Mr. Strache offers her road-building contracts in the country in return.
After resigning as vice chancellor and leader of the Freedom Party on Saturday, Mr. Strache played down his comments as “typical alcohol-fueled macho behavior” as he tried to impress the “attractive hostess.”
“I behaved boastfully like a teenager,” he said at a news conference in Vienna on Saturday.
Austria may be back at the center of a battle of ideas between liberal Western democrats and populist forces allied with Mr. Putin, who as a K.G.B. spy based in Communist Germany would go to Austria to ski.
“Vienna plays a key role for Putin and for the far right,” said Peter Pilz, an independent Austrian lawmaker. “Far-right parties all over Europe have become a sort of fifth column for Russia. In Austria, that fifth column has been in government.”
Mr. Strache first met Mr. Putin in May 2007. In 2014, at least two Freedom Party members took part as election observers during the Russian referendum after the annexation of Crimea.
Then in 2016, seven months before the meeting in Ibiza, Mr. Strache traveled to Moscow to sign a formal cooperation agreement between the Freedom Party and Mr. Putin’s United Russia party.
Last August, Austria’s foreign minister, Karin Kneissl, who is backed by the Freedom Party, invited Mr. Putin to her wedding. And foreign intelligence services have stopped sharing sensitive information with Austria for fear that it may leak to Moscow.
But Chancellor Kurz had said that the links between the Freedom Party and Russia were overstated.
“Regarding the close contacts between Russia and the Freedom Party, I can only smile,” he said in an interview with The New York Times last month. “Every Western foreign minister has more contact with senior Russian officials in one year than the Freedom Party in its entire history.”
Mr. Kurz won in 2017 by giving a youthful repackaging to much of the agenda of the Freedom Party, which he then invited into a coalition government.
At one point, according to the footage, Mr. Strache compared journalists to prostitutes. He also said he would like Austria’s news media landscape to resemble that of neighboring Hungary, where Prime Minister Viktor Orban turned the country’s public media into a pro-government propaganda machine while allies have gradually bought up swathes of the private media sector.
“We want to build a media landscape like Orban did,” Mr. Strache says in the video, floating the idea of partly privatizing Austria’s public broadcaster and encouraging a suggestion by his Russian counterpart to take over Austria’s most influential tabloid.
“If she takes over the Krone newspaper three weeks before election and brings us to spot number one, then we can talk about anything,” Mr. Strache says.
Mr. Strache’s dismissive comments about journalists and casual planning to undermine Austria’s media freedom are seen as ominous. Last year, an internal memo circulated by the press chief of the Interior Ministry, which is controlled by the Freedom Party, instructed officials to shut out critical news media and reward those that provided favorable coverage with access.
Since then, the party has proposed replacing the broadcast fee that Austrians pay the public broadcaster directly with a tax-funded model that would give the government more control over the outlet.
In recent weeks, a senior Freedom Party official has also demanded the removal of a television news anchor on Austria’s public broadcaster who had challenged him about a campaign poster that many said was reminiscent of Nazi propaganda.
In addition to openly nurturing its ties to Russia, the Interior Ministry has also raided its own intelligence agency, notably the department investigating far-right extremism.
And last month, a Freedom Party official wrote a poem calling immigrants rats.
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/18/world/europe/austria-strache-resigns-video.html
2019-05-18 18:00:00Z
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