Austria’s Kurz Faces Confidence Vote After Nationalists Out

(Bloomberg) -- Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Kurz is set to face a no-confidence vote on Monday, raising the specter of a deepening state crisis.

His decision to sack nationalist Interior Minister Herbert Kickl, which triggered the resignation of the remaining Freedom Party cabinet members, has estranged him from his erstwhile partners and raises the chances that the parliamentary motion will pass with Freedom Party backing.

“It would be naïve of Kurz if he was assuming that after he’s expressed his mistrust in the Freedom Party, the Freedom Party wouldn’t mistrust him,” Kickl told Oesterreich newspaper on Tuesday. “Kurz has maneuvered himself into a dead end.”

Since taking power in 2017, Kurz has tried to show conservatives across Europe that they can achieve their goals by working with their nationalist rivals. But the collapse of his coalition has served rather to highlights the risks of getting into bed with a party that has spent much of its time on the fringes of the mainstream.

President Alexander Van der Bellen confirmed the Freedom Party ministers’ exit from cabinet on Tuesday. Kurz said he’ll give the president a proposal for independent caretakers to take the posts later today. The appointees, which include defence, labor and transport, would be in office until a new government is sworn in after snap elections, likely to take place in September. It’s up to Van der Bellen to approve Kurz’s proposals.

Unfit to Govern

The 32-year old leader -- who has declared his former coalition partner unfit to govern -- has had to navigate a chaotic situation since nationalist leader Heinz-Christian Strache resigned as his vice chancellor on Saturday over a video showing him promising government contracts for campaign funds.

Kurz has shifted gears to begin campaigning, attempting to calm rattled voters as he tries to consolidate power. In the first poll after the eventful weekend his People’s Party gained four percentage points and now stands at 38% support.

The pending no-confidence vote -- submitted by one of the smaller parties in parliament -- demonstrates the risky situation Kurz is in. The Freedom Party and opposition Social Democrats have enough lawmakers to oust him before the snap election, a move that would mean the president has to ask someone else to form a caretaker government.

The Freedom Party said Kickl’s comments didn’t mean that the party would back the no-confidence motion. The Social Democrats reiterated their demand to remove Kurz and his conservative ministers as well and appoint technocrats-only cabinet, but didn’t say whether they will vote for the motion.

An opinion poll published Monday, the first since the scandal broke late on May 17, showed the Freedom Party falling 5 percentage points to 18%. The opposition Social Democrats and Neos party inched up, with Kurz’s People’s Party the main beneficiary.

Kurz, who rode to power on a hard-line immigration platform that stoked conflict with German Chancellor Angela Merkel and marked him as a rising young conservative. He faces a first test of his new strategy in European Parliament elections on Sunday.

--With assistance from Jonathan Tirone and Matthias Wabl.

To contact the reporter on this story: Boris Groendahl in Vienna at bgroendahl@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Chad Thomas at cthomas16@bloomberg.net, ;Flavia Krause-Jackson at fjackson@bloomberg.net, Zoe Schneeweiss, Ben Sills

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