VIENNA (AP) — Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Kurz called for an early election after his vice chancellor resigned Saturday over a covertly shot video that showed him apparently promising government contracts to a purported Russian investor.
Kurz said he would ask President Alexander Van der Bellen to set a date for a new election"as soon as possible."
Kurz also said a possible coalition with the center-left Social Democrats would derail the government's program of limiting debt and taxes. In the video, the source of which the publications declined to reveal, Strache and party colleague Johann Gudenus are heard telling the unnamed woman she could expect lucrative construction work if she bought Austria's Kronen Zeitung newspaper and supported the Freedom Party. The video spanned six hours of drink-fueled conversation in a villa on the Spanish island of Ibiza between the Austrian politicians and the woman, who claimed to be the niece of a prominent Russian businessman.
On one side are nationalist, anti-immigrant movements critical of the EU such as Austria's Freedom Party, the Alternative for Germany party and France's far-right National Rally party. They want to halt most immigration into Europe, especially from Muslim areas, and give more control back to national governments from EU headquarters in Brussels.
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