(AUSTRIAN, LANKAPUVATH) –Europe’s most prominent Jewish organisation has called on the victor in Austria’s election not to form a coalition with the far-Right.
Sebastian Kurz is set to become the world’s youngest leader after winning Sunday’s elections at the age of just 31.
He is widely expected to form a coalition with the nationalist Freedom Party (FPÖ) after his conservative People’s Party (ÖVP) failed to win an outright majority,
But on Monday the European Jewish Congress urged him not to offer the nationalists a place in his government.
“A party which has run on a platform of xenophobic intolerance and the targeting of immigrants must not be granted a seat at the governing table,” Moshe Kantor, the president of the Jewish Congress, said.
“Europe in general and Austria in particular should know all too well where acceptance of populist and pernicious ideologies leads.
“Austria’s central role in a post-war Europe founded on democracy and human rights must not be allowed to be sacrificed on the altar of political expediency and short-term populism which reminds us of far darker times within living memory.”
