Tyrol’s FPÖ leader Markus Abwerzger sees a result of 30 percent for the Freedom Party in the National Council elections within reach. “30 percent is possible. There needs to be a clear distance from the others,” said Abwerzger in an APA interview. He expressed a clear preference for a coalition with the ÖVP. Abwerzger named a federal Corona aid fund based on the Lower Austrian model as a condition for the FPÖ coalition, fed, for example, by money from the Covid financing agency COFAG.
“The bigger we win and the bigger the gap, the better,” stressed Abwerzger, who has headed the Tyrolean FPÖ for eleven years. But: “If we come first with 26 percent, I would also be happy.” The primary goal is clearly to make the FPÖ number one for the first time in history and to make federal party chairman Herbert Kickl the “People’s Chancellor.” Despite the “good starting position,” the election is “not a sure thing,” warned the 48-year-old: “The election campaign is only just beginning. But we are an incredibly strong campaigning group with the best top candidate.”
Any future possible government constellation involving the FPÖ “will only work with Herbert Kickl,” Abwerzger made clear. And the Tyrolean FPÖ leader again expressed a clear preference for cooperation with the ÖVP as a junior partner: “I am a friend of large, clear bourgeois majorities.” There are “many more points of common ground” with the People’s Party than with the “left-wing” SPÖ, which “is led by a communist (party leader Andreas Babler, note).” “After all, 90 percent of the ‘Austria Plan’ by Karl Nehammer (Chancellor and ÖVP party chairman, note) was copied by the FPÖ,” Abwerzger joked. The state party chairman did not attach much importance to the fact that the ÖVP party leadership consistently rules out a coalition with the Kickl-FPÖ: “The ÖVP has almost always changed its mind after the election.” She has a “special character trait”, namely being “very flexible in different situations”: “First she pursues a right-wing conservative policy with the FPÖ and then she enters into a coalition with the left-wing Greens. In principle, she doesn’t care about anything. The main thing is that she is in power.”
In his view, a Corona aid fund must be a condition for the Freedom Party to participate in the government in the event of coalition negotiations, explained the Tyrolean FPÖ leader. This should be largely filled by “Cofag funds that were wrongfully paid, especially to ÖVP favorites,” some of which are now being reclaimed. The fund should particularly benefit children and young people who have suffered as a result of the Corona measures. In addition, an “honest review” of the Corona events must take place under FPÖ leadership. Specifically, Abwerzger demanded that all minutes of the state GECKO Commission and all Corona commissions or committees at the state level be disclosed. Politicians such as ÖVP European Minister Karoline Edtstadler must also apologize for their statements that “unvaccinated Austrians actually have no right to be here.”
For Abwerzger, the main focus was on the entire migration and asylum area, where a “People’s Chancellor Kickl” would see a turnaround. On the one hand, a federal law with uniform, significantly lower rates for minimum benefits and social assistance is needed, “following the example of Lower Austria and Upper Austria.” “The self-realization of left-wing parties within the federal states must stop,” Abwerzger said, referring not only to Vienna but also to Tyrol, where the level of assistance is similar. “Almost two thirds of those receiving minimum benefits are foreigners,” he said, seeing an urgent need for action. “In addition, people with a negative asylum decision must be deported within three months, as in France,” demanded the Tyrolean FPÖ leader, who also made three further announcements: The FPÖ will and must ensure that “illegal residence” becomes a criminal offense and not, as is currently the case, falls under administrative law. In addition, there needs to be “zero immigration from Islamist Arab countries”, which is currently endangering our entire liberal society and security. “And migrants who have been granted citizenship must be able to have it withdrawn if they engage in even the slightest Islamist or state-threatening activities,” said Abwerzger, a lawyer by profession.
In addition, a general “conservative-bourgeois turnaround” is needed, which the FPÖ wants to bring about. In terms of social policy, a policy must also be made for the “large majority”. This would mean, for example, “eliminating” gender from the public sphere, opposing “misunderstood liberal attitudes” that only “earn head-shaking from 90 percent of the population.” In the area of childcare, “real freedom of choice” must be ensured again without state paternalism – ideally through the Salzburg “Berndorfer model”, in which families are paid money at the minimum level for childcare at least until the child’s third year. “Parents should be able to afford to stay at home again,” says Abwerzger, because: “If the parental home is suitable, childcare at home for the first three years is certainly an advantage for the child, not a disadvantage.”
In terms of personnel, Abwerzger would like to see the following “besides the Chancellery”: “The Ministry of the Interior, the Ministry of Education, the Ministry of Finance and the Ministry of Justice would also be important.”
The FPÖ politician was critical of the black-red coalition in Tyrol, which he faces as the head of the second strongest party in the opposition. In terms of social policy, the state government under Governor Anton Mattle (ÖVP) and his deputy Georg Dornauer (SPÖ) has “moved extremely far to the left.” Mattle, who is excluding the FPÖ, is a “weak governor” with no weight. In day-to-day politics, too, both are implementing “left-wing policies,” for example in the area of migration, in that even people with negative asylum decisions continue to receive social benefits: “That is the Mattle-Dornauer bonus for occasional rapists.” Dornauer, on the other hand, is stabbing Mattle in the back in the area of transit by questioning “emergency measures.” According to Abwerzger, “two more emergency measures” are therefore needed: “Tighten the leash on Georg Dornauer and muzzle him.”
In any case, he wants to run again in the 2027 state election and “as revenge” challenge Mattle a second time as “candidate for state governor,” announced Tyrol’s FPÖ chairman. And should the call for the position of justice minister come to Vienna? “That’s not a question at the moment. My focus is on Tyrol and not on that. But you should never rule anything out in life.”
