Austria: Chancellor Kurz announces snap election

Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Kurz has called for the country to hold fresh elections following the resignation of his scandal-hit deputy, Heinz-Christian Strache.

Kurz on Saturday said a vote should be held “as soon as possible” hours after Strache, the vice chancellor and leader of the far-right Freedom Party (FPO), resigned and plunged Austria’s politics into crisis mode.

Kurz, who heads the centre-right People’s Party and leads Austria’s coalition government, said he had made his position known to Austria’s president.

“After yesterday’s video, I must say quite honestly: Enough is enough,” he added.

The political turmoil erupted on Friday after Strache was shown in a sting video meeting a woman posing as the niece of a Russian oligarch in 2017, shortly before the election that brought him to power as part of the FPO-People’s Party coalition administration.

In the footage – aired by the German daily Sueddeutsche Zeitung and weekly Der Spiegel newspapers – the far-right Strache was seen offering state contracts in exchange for political and financial backing.

Addressing reporters during his resignation speech on Saturday, Strache said: “It was dumb, it was irresponsible and it was a mistake.”

He maintained, however, that he had done nothing illegal and described the sting as a “targeted political assassination”.

Opposition parties including the Social Democrats, the liberal Neos party and the Greens called for a new election in the wake of his resignation.