Austria’s ‘Ibiza scandal’, explained

A sting operation that has already led to the resignation of Austria’s far-right deputy chancellor and the collapse of the ruling coalition could have even greater consequences for the European Union, commentators have warned.

“Enough is enough,” said the nation’s chancellor, Sebastian Kurz, as he announced that his centre-right Austrian People’s party (ÖVP) was abandoning its coalition with the nationalist group and called snap elections, expected to be held in September.

Who was involved in the sting?

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On Friday night, a video sent to journalists at German newspapers Der Spiegel and Süddeutsche Zeitung was leaked to the public. The footage showed Heinz-Christian Strache, Austrian deputy chancellor and leader of the far-right Freedom party (FPÖ), trying to trade public contracts for party donations from a woman he believed to be the wealthy niece of a Russian oligarch.

They also discussed the idea of taking over Austria's best-selling newspaper to turn it into a party propaganda organ. In the footage, the woman offers to buy a 50% stake in Kronen Zeitung and switch its editorial position to support the Freedom Party. In exchange, Strache said he could award her public contracts, explaining that he wanted to “build a media landscape like [Victor] Orban”, a reference to Hungary's authoritarian prime minister.

The BBC reports it is not known who recorded the video, and “neither is it clear who set up the meeting, which allegedly took place at a villa on the Spanish island of Ibiza in July 2017 - before the FPÖ joined the new government”.

What happened over the weekend?

The so-called ‘Ibiza scandal’ has had a dramatic and immediate impact.

Strache and his parliamentary leader, Johann Gudenus, resigned on Saturday, saying their behaviour was “stupid, irresponsible and a mistake”.

In a brief statement to the press announcing the snap elections, Chancellor Kurz described the many challenges he faced in recent months in dealing with Strache’s Freedom Party, “which despite its alignment with the chancellor’s center-right People’s Party on policy issues, remained a lightning rod for criticism with its racist comments and other controversies” says Politico.

“From publication to government collapse took just 26 hours”, says the Financial Times.

What will the wider impact be?

Politico says “coming just days before next week’s European Parliament election, the episode has rocked the political landscape in both Austria and Europe, where the Alpine nation’s non-traditional coalition was seen as an experiment in the viability of alliances that pair mainstream parties with populists”.

“It was a gamble celebrated by both moderates and hardliners on the right across Europe as a model: a blueprint to contain populist anger, or else a road map towards the reshaping of the EU’s liberal political agenda,” says the FT. “Now, with just days until critical EU parliamentary elections, the Austrian template is in tatters.”

“Centrist leaders across Europe hope the fallout from the ‘Ibiza scandal’ will be felt beyond Austria in the European parliament elections this week, in which populist, nationalist and far-right parties have been forecast to make gains” writes Philip Oltermann in The Guardian.

“Strache’s apparent eagerness to embrace corruption is in stark contrast to the ‘drain the swamp’ rhetoric populists routinely deploy in their attempts to portray politics as a battle by decent ordinary people against a venal elite” he adds.

“Austria is at the center of a battle of ideas between liberal Western democrats and populist forces allied with [Russian President Vladimir] Putin,” says the New York Times.

Foreign intelligence services have already stopped sharing sensitive information with Austria for fear that it may leak to Moscow, and despite denials by the Kremlin, the paper says the video “raised questions about whether Russia had direct influence inside a government at the heart of Europe”.