Austria’s Sebastian Kurz should be praised for refusing to ignore the populists

Today the world’s youngest leader takes his place at the top table of European politics, as Sebastian Kurz becomes Chancellor of Austria at the age of just 31. However the toasts in Brussels (and Berlin) will be distinctly muted, for Kurz and his centre-right People’s Party have formed a controversial coalition with Austria’s hard-right Freedom Party – a party shunned by centrist parties throughout the EU. It’s a sign that populism is alive and well in Central Europe. So is this new government merely an Austrian anomaly? Or does it mark the advent of a Pan-European trend?

The specifics of this coalition may be peculiarly Austrian, but the generalities reveal a great deal about European politics as a whole. Germans in particular will be peering nervously across the border – curious and anxious to see how this bold political experiment plays out. Until last summer, when Kurz became party leader, his Austrian People’s Party was a paradigm of Europe’s centre-right malaise.