Word: austria
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...Strache is leader of Austria's far-right Freedom Party, which together with an offshoot far-right party known as the Alliance for the Future of Austria is expected to win up to a quarter of the vote in general elections scheduled for September 28. That would be the best result for the anti-immigrant far right in Austria since the same Freedom Party, then led by the charismatic Jörg Haider, won nearly 28% of the vote back in 1999, triggering a wave of European indignation that culminated in E.U.-imposed sanctions. Haider split from the Freedom Party...
...whatever the shape of the next government, it will be under mounting pressure to pursue the kind of anti-European Union and anti-immigrant policies that the populist right favors, says Thomas Hofer, a political consultant and a former editor at the newsmagazine Profil. "The right wing in Austria is on the rise again," he says...
...irony in that rise is that Austria has rarely had it so good. Growth and investment have easily outpaced the E.U. average for years; banks are profiting from new markets in eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union. The capital Vienna, flush with tax revenues, looks almost imperial again. Much of the country's prosperity is a direct consequence of one of the far right's most cherished bugbears: the E.U.'s expansion towards the east...
...economic woes that are pushing voters to the right; in part it's immigration, which has long been an emotive issue for Austrians. Austria's location in the heart of Central Europe has made it a favored destination for several generations of migrants, from Hungary in 1956, Czechoslovakia in 1968 and, most recently, the former Yugoslavia in the 1990s. Against this modern reality stands Austria's relish of its historical role as a bulwark against eastern encroachments. The repulse of the Ottoman Empire's army from Vienna in 1683, when Muslim hordes were feared to be on the verge...
...Meanwhile, Austria's mainstream parties, which have shared power in grand coalitions for most of the post-war period, are running out of steam. The latest partnership lasted less than two years before collapsing in acrimony in July, triggering this month's vote. An un-charismatic Social Democratic chancellor, Alfred Gusenbauer, failed to push through a single major policy initiative in the face of opposition from his ostensible governing partners in the conservative People's Party, which was looking for any excuse to break up the marriage. The final straw appears to have been Gusenbauer's promise, in a letter...