Austrian voters opted for a turn to the right on Sunday as young immigration hard-liner Sebastian Kurz and his conservative party won the parliamentary election, while the far right made strong gains.
Kurz's conservative People's Party (OeVP) won 31.7 per cent, 7.7 percentage points more than in the previous 2013 vote.
"I can promise you today that I will fight for change in this country with all my power," 31-year-old Kurz told a large crowd of cheering supporters.
If Foreign Minister Kurz manages to form a coalition cabinet, he would become Europe's youngest government leader.
Kurz has been the frontrunner in surveys since May, thanks to his plans to curb immigration by refugees and by workers from poorer eastern EU countries.
The far-right opposition Freedom Party (FPOe), which promoted tough immigration policies long before Kurz shifted to a hard-line approach, gained 5.5 points to win 25.9 per cent of the votes.
"It shows that we have arrived at the centre of society. We are the ones that dominate the political debate," FPOe leader Heinz-Christian Strache said.
Strache's populist party has been trying to tone down its radical rhetoric and to take a less negative view of the European Union, in an effort to join a government after the election.
Kurz has signalled that a coalition with the FPOe is an option, but hedged his bets on Sunday when he said that he would talk to all parties to see which one would support his policies, including income tax cuts and the streamlining of Austria's bureaucracy.
However, when the first projection was announced at the OeVP's election day headquarters, hundreds of party members cheered loudly when they learned of the FPOe results.
A continued co-operation between the OeVP and Chancellor Christian Kern's Social Democratic Party (SPOe) looked increasingly unlikely, given the outcome and the deep rifts between the two centrist parties that led to the breakdown of their coalition in May.
The projection, which was based on 93 per cent of counted votes, showed that Chancellor Christian Kern's Social Democratic Party (SPOe) came in second on Sunday with 26.8 per cent of the votes, unchanged from 2013.
According to post-election surveys, voters who opted for right-wing parties saw migration as the decisive issue. Some 130,000 asylum seekers applied for protection in Austria in 2015 and 2016.
Chancellor Kern has struggled to promote his plans to boost the economy during his campaign as his right-wing rivals banked on immigration issues. He was also hurt by revelations that he had hired an Israeli spin doctor who operated fake websites to discredit Kurz.
"Now it is up to us to defend an open, modern, democratic and diverse Austria," Kern told a crowd of supporters.
"We see ourselves as the alternative to populism," he said later on Sunday evening, adding that he would not seek ministerial posts at all costs.
The liberal Neos garnered 5.1 per cent and the leftist Liste Pilz 4.3 per cent.
The environmental Greens, which won the presidential vote in December against the FPOe, suffered massive losses and only collected 3.9 per cent of the ballots, their worst result in 30 years.
Following the election of President Alexander Van der Bellen, the Greens have been reeling from internal squabbles.
The conflicts led to the expulsion of their youth wing, the resignation of their party chief and the split with one of their most prominent legislators, Peter Pilz, who launched his own platform.
- AUSTRIAN CONSERVATIVE LEADER SEES MANY OPTIONS ON COALITIONS -
Austrian conservative leader Sebastian Kurz, who secured victory in Sunday's parliamentary election but fell well short of a majority, does not rule out the possiblity of forming a minority government once the final result comes in.
"I would of course like to form a stable government. If that cannot be done then there are other options," he told broadcaster ORF, adding that he planned to talk to all parties in parliament but would first wait for a count of postal ballots that begins on Monday.
That count will settle the close race for second place between the Social Democrats and the far-right Freedom Party.
- STOLEN THUNDER -
In December, the FPOe almost won the presidency and topped opinion polls in the midst of Europe's migrant crisis.
But since taking over the OeVP in May and re-branding it as his personal "movement", Kurz has stolen some of Strache's thunder.
As foreign minister, the rosy-cheeked Kurz claims credit for closing the Balkan migrant trail in 2016 that saw hundreds of thousands of migrants trek into western Europe.
Pushing far-right themes, he wants to cut benefits for all foreigners, reduce bureaucracy and stop the EU having too much say in national affairs -- in common with Strache.
The last time the FPOe entered government, in 2000 under controversial then-leader Joerg Haider, who praised Hitler's "orderly" employment policies, Austria was ostracised in Europe.
But there would not be the same backlash now owing to the "normalisation of the far-right in Europe since then," said expert Pepijn Bergsen at the Economist Intelligence Unit.
"The FPOe is a different party. Its campaign was moderate in tone," finance student Marcus Kronberg, 23, told AFP at the OeVP's election party.
"There was nothing to be ashamed of as an Austrian. I have no problems with (a FPOe coalition) and I hope Brussels will see things the same way."
- EU HEADACHE -
But the FPOe in government would still pose a fresh headache for Brussels as it struggles with Brexit and the rise of nationalists in Germany, Hungary, Poland and elsewhere.
Like Alternative for Germany, which last month became the third-largest party in the Bundestag, and France's National Front, the FPOe has stoked concerns about a record influx of migrants into Austria and Europe.
The party was founded by ex-Nazis in the 1950s -- Strache flirted with neo-Nazism in his youth -- and is ambivalent at best about the EU.
The FPOe has an alliance with President Vladimir Putin's United Russia party and wants EU sanctions on Moscow lifted.
Vienna will hold the EU's presidency in the second half of 2018, just when Brussels wants to conclude Brexit talks.
"The Freedom Party as a government partner will not make a good impression in Europe (and) Kurz is aware of that," commented Der Standard newspaper.
"But the question is whether there is any getting around Strache."
- THE FAR-RIGHT IS NOT DEAD -
There was a temptation after the Dutch and French elections this year to declare an end to the far-right populist wave in Europe. But last month's German election, which saw the anti-immigration Alternative for Germany (AfD) party surge into the Bundestag, and now the Austrian election, say otherwise.
Despite a hard shift right by the conservative OVP under Kurz, the FPO appeared close to the all-time high of 26.9 it won in 1999. That result paved the way for it to enter government, a move which prompted a horrified European Union to impose sanctions against Austria. If the FPO enters the government this time, expect little more than a whimper.
The Austrian result showed that the refugee crisis of 2015 has left deep scars among European voters, especially in countries that were at the centre of the storm. The number of asylum seekers entering Austria has fallen sharply over the past year. But migration was the dominant theme in the election.
"The German election brought populism back to the centre of the debate and the Austrian election will strengthen that," said Cas Mudde, an expert on far-right politics at the University of Georgia.
- TROUBLE FOR MERKEL AND MACRON -
A new Austrian coalition of Kurz's OVP and Heinz-Christian Strache's FPO would be a tougher partner for Merkel and French President Emmanuel Macron as they push reforms of the euro zone and EU asylum policies.
Kurz has praised Hungary's Prime Minister Viktor Orban for building a fence along his border to keep out immigrants. And Strache has said Austria should join the Visegrad group of central and east European states - Hungary, Poland, the Czech Republic and Slovakia - that are united in their opposition to EU migrant quotas pushed by Berlin and Brussels.
Both parties are sceptical about steps towards closer integration of the euro zone, especially changes that would centralise powers in Brussels, such as Macron's idea to create a budget and finance minister for the euro zone.
YOUTH MOVEMENT
Kurz, on track to become the next chancellor of Austria, is just 31 years of age - young even by the standards of Europe's recent youth movement, which saw Macron enter the Elysee Palace at the age of 39 and Christian Lindner, 38, lead Germany's liberal Free Democrats (FDP) back into the Bundestag.
Kurz and Lindner showed that young new faces can inject dynamism into old establishment parties that have lost their way with voters. Kurz rebranded the OVP as the "New People's Party" and changed its colours from black to turquoise. Lindner used trendy black-and-white campaign posters that showed him staring at his smartphone to revitalise the FDP's image.
Macron, who formed his own political movement, was able to paint himself as a rebel outsider despite having served for four years under failed French Socialist Francois Hollande.
And don't forget Italy, where the two top candidates in next year's election are likely to be Luigi Di Maio, the new 31-year-old leader of the upstart 5-Star movement and former prime minister Matteo Renzi, who at 42 looks positively old by Europe's new standards.
