A far-right leader could soon take the helm in EU member Austria. Here’s why it matters

Austria’s President Alexander Van der Bellen, shown at a news conference in Vienna, on Monday tasked the leader of the far-right Freedom Party with trying to put together a coalition government. Van der Bellen then called in Kickl — a sharp-tongued provocateur who last year mocked the now 80-year-old president as “a mummy” and “senile” — for talks that led to Monday’s offer for the Freedom Party to try to form a new government. A former speechwriter for the late former far-right leader Jörg Haider and a longtime campaign strategist who coined catchy and provocative anti-immigration slogans, Kickl was interior minister from 2017 to 2019 when the Freedom Party was a junior partner in a coalition government under conservative then-Chancellor Sebastian Kurz. Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, seen by many as the most pro-Russia leader of any EU country, hailed a “historic victory” for the Freedom Party after Austria’s elections in September.