Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker on Tuessday used a political analogy directly linked to Greece’s “strange bedfellows” coalition government, in greeting new Austrian Federal Chancellor Sebastian Kurz to Brussels.
“This government (Austria) has a clear pro-European stance – as I am working with the extreme right coalition partner with Mr. (Alexis) Tsipras, why are we making a whole thing out of Austria, when we like to be partially blind when it comes to other countries?” he said, referring to the leftist-rightist coalition government in Athens.
Kurz and his the Austrian People’s party attracted criticism around Europe this week after striking a deal with the far-right Freedom party and its leader, Heinz-Christian Strache, to form a coalition government in Vienna.
The Greek coalition government is comprised of leftist SYRIZA, which took a plurality of the general vote in a snap September 2016 election, and whose leader, Alexis Tsipras, serves as the prime minister. However, the junior coalition partner is the small rightist-populist Independent Greeks (AN.EL) party, whose founder and leader, Panos Kammenos, is the defense minister.
Among others, the outspoken Kammenos, a lawmaker since the early 1990s, had threatened to “turn a blind eye” to what he called “jihadis” headed for western Europe, to tear up the bailout memorandums in one stroke, abolish the property tax imposed by a previous coalition government and resign if VAT rates are raised for the Aegean islands – a development that will come on Jan. 1, 2018.
