Interior Minister Karl Nehammer was officially invested as Chancellor in Austria on Monday 6 December. He is the third to hold the post in a few months in the Alpine country riddled with corruption scandals.
The new 49-year-old Conservative leader was sworn in before President Alexander Van der Bellen in Vienna, according to a ceremony broadcast on television.
Born in Vienna in 1972, Karl Nehammer first made his stripes in the army, where he was appointed lieutenant, while at the same time activating within the conservative ÖVP party.
He then branched out into political communication before being elected deputy in 2017, then being appointed Minister of the Interior in January 2020. As such, he had to manage the first Islamist attack in Austria a few months later. , which killed four people and during which failures of its services were pointed out.
“A very consensual character”
” It’s a choice of balance », Underlines the political scientist Patrick Moreau, specialist in Austria. Without being from his very close circle, he is ” a devotee par excellence of Sebastian Kurz “, Which he shares the hard line on the right of asylum. But unlike the former Chancellor Kurz who had made a successful conquest of the party, ” he is a representative of the old ÖVP (…) and a very consensual character He continues.
According to the expert, this element should ” facilitate “Work and” stabilize »The coalition with the Greens, the Conservatives’ partner in government. This unprecedented tandem has been severely tested this year by several ideological disputes, but above all by several court cases.
Kurz at the heart of a corruption scandal
Sebastian kurz had been implicated for the first time in May for alleged false testimony before a parliamentary committee, then in October in a corruption scandal which cost him his post of chancellor.
Replaced by Alexander Schallenberg, previously Minister of Foreign Affairs, the 35-year-old official remained as President of the Conservative Party. But he finally preferred to throw in the towel last week to devote himself to his family and meet new ” professional challenges “.
To make his mark better and turn the Kurz page, Karl Nehammer immediately decided to carry out a vast cabinet reshuffle.
Successful deconfinement of the country
Even before 2020, Austrian political life experienced many upheavals: the Alpine country of 8.9 million inhabitants thus acquired its fifth chancellor since 2016. Karl Nehammer’s first mission will be to succeed exit from confinement, in theory expected by the end of the week.
Faced with the surge in the number of Covid-19 contaminations, Austria stood out in the European Union by confining in November the unvaccinated, then the vaccinated: shops, restaurants, cultural and sporting places have lowered the curtain , only the schools remaining open. It is also the first country in the EU to have decreed compulsory vaccination, as of February 2022.
With his military past, Karl Nehammer did not hesitate, at the head of the Ministry of the Interior, to issue severe warnings to the demonstrators who have been taking to the streets for three weeks for protest against anti-Covid-19 measures.
He will also have to restore the image of his party. Since the fall of Sebastian Kurz, the ÖVP, in power since 1987, has lost its first place in the polls: it has been overtaken by the Social Democratic Party and is now closely followed by the far right.
With AFP