AUSTRIA'S NEW POLITICAL LANDSCAPE

People's Party (OVP) leader Sebastian Kurz will become the next Austrian chancellor and coalition partner Freedom Party (FPO) head Heinz-Christian Strache will become Vice-Chancellor in the new Austrian government. Strache will also be the Minister for Sports and Public Servants. The FPO will lead the Ministries of Interior, Defence and Foreign Affairs. The OVP will have seven Ministers and one DEputy. They include the Ministries of Finance, Economy and Justice.

Both parties campaigned on tougher immigration controls, speeder deportationss of failed asylum seekers and a crackdown on radical Islam. The oVP wants to reduce the burden on taxpayers and above all wants to ensure greater security in Austria, including through the fight against illegal immigration.

Both parties oppose deeper political integration among EU states and want Austria's borders secured against immigration until the EU's external borders are secured.

While Kurz and Freedom's Strache may shake up Austria's political order, they're mostly aligned in pledging business-friendly policies, notably to scrap corporate taxes on retained profits. They'll also stay in the German-led camp favouring fiscal austerity in the Euro area. The EU is so important for Austrian business, and both parties are close to Austrian business, especially large companies, that this won't turn into an anti-EU government.

To resist centralistic ideas driven by Merkel and Marcon, Strache expresses kinship with eastern countries including Poland and Hungary, which balked at accepting refugees and are at odds with EU authorties over civic freedoms and sepration of powers. The FPO is also in favour of lifting EU sanctions against Russia.

The FPO Platform regarding the EU

• European policy and international relationships to be based on an association of free peoples and autonomous fatherlands.
• Committed to a Europe of peoples and autochthonous groups of people which have developed through history, and firmy rejects any artificial synchronization of the diverse European languages and cultures by means of forced multiculturalism, globalization and mass immigration. Europe shall not be reduced to a political project of the European Union.
• Committed to a Europe of self-determined peoples and fatherlands and to cooperation within Europe according to the basic principles of subsidiarity and federalism. The destiny of Europe must be characterised by the organizational freedom of its states.
• The aim of European integration is to have a community of states that make up Europe geographically, spiritually and culturally, and which have bound themselves by the western values, the cultural heritage and the traditions of the European peoples.
• Stands for a Europe that facilitates genuine democracy and respects responsible, free citizens. Fundamental changes to the Federal Constitution via treaties, such as in European law for example, require a binding referendum.
• Committed to a set of European agreements with a catalogue of rights and obligations for the Union and Member States. The basic constitutional principles of sovereign Member States must have absolute priority over Community law.
• The Benes decrees and AVNOJ regulations that infringe upon human rights, coupled with all the related amnesty laws, cannot be accepted in a humanist Europe and should be revoked in the interests of justice for those displaced, murdered and expropriated.
• Committed to a common foreign and security policy of such a European alliance of states that preserves Austrian neutrality and maintains distance from non-European powers and military alliances dominated by non-European countries to safeguard common European interests worldwide.