Austrian Chancellor Werner Faymann resigned yesterday, bowing to a revolt from inside his Social Democratic Party after it suffered humiliating electoral defeat to a far right buoyed by Europe’s migration crisis.
Faymann’s surprise announcement marks the fall of a political survivor adept at compromises and about-faces that angered his party’s base in his more than seven years in power.
While his party’s popularity has been waning for years, the rising tide of populism that has carried anti-immigrant parties in countries, including Germany, during the migration crisis, hastened his departure.
“Do I have full cover ... strong support within the party? I must say the answer is no,” Faymann, 56, said in a statement.
“I draw the consequences from this low level of support and step down from my positions as party leader and federal chancellor,” he added.
Vice Chancellor Reinhold Mitterlehner, who heads the conservative People’s Party, which rules in coalition with the Social Democrats, said he saw no need for a snap election after the announcement, news agency APA reported.
“For us it was a big surprise as we believed the personnel debate at the Social Democrats had been done,” Conservative Finance Minister Hans Joerg Schelling told reporters in Brussels.
As the anti-immigration Freedom Party is leading in opinion polls on more than 30%, the Social Democrats have little interest in a general election being held before the next one is due in 2018, as they would most likely lose the chancellorship.
With President Heinz Fischer, a former Social Democrat, still in office until July, a Social Democrat is likely to take over from Mitterlehner, who will run the government on an interim basis.
Who Faymann’s successor in the Chancellery will be remained unclear, but Vienna’s long-standing mayor, Michael Haeupl, said he would take over as head of the party on an interim basis.
Faymann paid the price for the first round of Austria’s presidential election two weeks ago, when the Freedom Party’s candidate came first on 35% and neither ruling party’s nominee made it into the May 22 run-off.
After the election, which produced the worst combined result for both ruling parties since Austria’s president became directly elected in 1951, opposition among the social democrats grew into open revolt.
Faymann, who rose through the ranks of the SPO apparatus in Vienna, came under pressure from some in his party over his government’s restrictions on immigration and asylum, which were widely seen as a late attempt to mimic far-right policies.
Austria took in around 90,000 asylum seekers in 2015, more than 1% of its population, as a wave of migrants, many fleeing conflicts in Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan, arrived in the republic of 8.5mn people.
Public fears linked to the migration crisis as well as dissatisfaction with the government and rising unemployment have contributed to the Freedom Party’s rise.
Faymann, who once worked briefly as a taxi driver and did not earn a degree, was also criticised by party pragmatists for defending a ban on forming coalitions with the FPO at the federal level.
The SPO’s leadership met on Monday afternoon to decide on a future course, including whether to open up to closer co-operation with the FPO. It was originally supposed to consider replacing Faymann, but his surprise announcement came just hours earlier.