Collapse of Austrian far-right in EU vote weakens ruling coalition

Austria's far-right received a thrashing in European Parliament elections at the weekend, calling into question the future of the ruling right-wing coalition, of which it forms part.

Opposition Socialists and Greens, who improved their standing in the polls, called on Monday for Chancellor Wolfgang Schuessel to call an early general election, two years ahead of schedule.

"The chancellor no longer has a majority in the country," charged Joseph Cap, head of the Social Democrat (SPOe) group in parliament.

"If he is consistent, he should rapidly call a parliamentary election," he added. The next general election is currently set for late 2006.

The far-right Freedom Party (FPOe), the junior parter in the governing coalition, won just 6.33 percent of the vote, holding on to one of Austria's 18 seats in the assembly -- down from five in the previous legislature.

The Freedom Party, led by the firebrand Joerg Haider, lost out notably to an outsider, the independent anti-corruption candidate Hans-Peter Martin, who took a surprise 14.04 percent of the vote, winning two seats.

Analysts said that Martin, a current European parliament member and former socialist whose campaign denounced widespread fraud in European Parliament circles, had managed to steal the anti-EU vote from Haider's party.

Martin has accused fellow European parliamentarians of padding their expense budgets and committing other petty frauds to round out their salaries.

Schuessel's conservative People's Party, leader in the ruling coalition, took six seats with 32.66 percent of the vote, falling behind the opposition Social Democrats who took seven seats with 33.45 percent.

The opposition Greens party took two seats with 12.75 percent of votes -- rising above the 10 percent watermark for the first time in a nationwide poll.

"The coalition of right-wing and far-right is faltering. It managed to win far less than 40 percent of votes," argued Alexander van der Bellen, leader of the Greens.

"The chancellor has to draw the consequences. There has to be a political change in our country."

According to political analyst Anton Pelinka, Schuessel may choose to ignore these calls from the opposition and see through the current legislature.

"But with the Freedom Party seriously weakened, the question is going to keep cropping up," he warned.

The right-wing government coalition was created in February 2000, when Schuessel defied international, particularly EU, criticism by inviting the far-right party to become a partner in government.

The Freedom Party, then led by Haider, promotes overtly xenophobic and racist policies and a nostalgic pan-German nationalism. It was deeply opposed to the EU's historic enlargement to 25 members on May 1.

But the party, which holds six of 18 portfolios in the current government, including the justice ministry, has been thrown into disarray by its abysmal showing in the weekend elections.

The setback has left some Freedom Party members calling for it to go back into opposition.

"The party is being overtaken on its right by Martin, who turned the campaign into a contest in patriotism. The hardliners think the time has come to pull out of the government," explained Peter Filzmaier, professor of political science in Vienna.

Moreover the Freedom Party's official candidate, the moderate Hans Kronberger, was ignored by voters, instead handing the party's only seat to Andreas Moelzer, one of its most radical ideologues.

As a columnist for Kronenzeitung, the country's largest-circulation newspaper which backed his campaign, he enjoyed mainstream support.

But the far-right commentator caused an uproar a decade ago by speaking of "the dangers of mixing races, between the Germanic community and eastern immigrants."

He had used the word "Umvolkung", a neologism coined by Germany's Nazi leaders when they banned marriages between Jews and non-Jewish people.