Austrian Chancellor Werner Faymann has resigned, his spokeswoman says, following the triumph by the far-right last month in the first round of presidential elections.
“He has resigned from all functions,” spokeswoman Anja Richter tells AFP.
The anti-immigration candidate from Austria’s far-right Freedom Party, Norbert Hofer, is the favorite to win the presidential run-off election on May 22, bolstered by anti-migrant sentiment.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel and her Austrian counterpart Werner Faymann shake hands following a press conference at the Chancellery in Berlin on September 15, 2015, after their meeting on the refugee crisis. (AFP/John Macdougall)
Austria sits at the crossroads of the two major migrant routes, from the Balkans and from Italy, and saw hundreds of thousands of migrants cross its territory in 2015.
Authorities have received around 90,000 asylum applications from people fleeing war, persecution and poverty who have opted to settle in the country.
On Saturday European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker raised the alarm over Austria’s response to the migrant crisis which he said had tempted other countries to close their borders while making far-right politics “presentable” elsewhere in Europe.
“What we see in Austria we have unfortunately seen in other European countries, where (political) parties play with people’s fears,” he said.
— AFP
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