The Austrian parliament voted on Monday to oust young Chancellor Sebastian Kurz, more than a week after he expelled his Freedom Party partners from the coalition government over a video scandal
MOSCOW (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 27th May, 2019) The Austrian parliament voted on Monday to oust young Chancellor Sebastian Kurz, more than a week after he expelled his Freedom Party partners from the coalition government over a video scandal.The far-right Freedom Party and the opposition Social Democrats both backed a no-confidence motion against the conservative government of the 32-year-old, ending his head-spinning career as the youngest European leader.
Kurz was born in Vienna on August 27, 1986. He studied at Gymnasium Erlgasse in the Austrian capital before going on to study law at University of Vienna but left before graduating.
At 17, he joined the Young People's Party, the youth wing of one of the two major Austrian parties. He completed mandatory military service in 2004-2005.
He went on to lead the Vienna office of the Young People's Party in 2007 and was promoted to its Federal chairman two years later.
He shortly became a member of the Vienna parliament and city council before taking on the job of state secretary for integration with the Austrian Interior Ministry in 2011-2013.
In 2013, he served as minister for European and international affairs before he was appointed foreign minister of Austria in 2014, becoming the youngest top diplomat in the world.
He was elected leader of the People's Party in May 2017 and led it to victory in the October parliamentary elections, getting a mandate from the president to form the government.
Kurz became Austria's youngest chancellor in December 2017, ruling in coalition with the Freedom Party. Its leader, Heinz-Christian Strache, was named vice chancellor.
A scandal broke out a week before the European Parliament vote in May after a video of a 2017 sting operation was released showing Strache apparently promise to fix public contracts for money to a woman posting as a niece of an oligarch from Latvia.
Kurz appeared for a while to be the winner after ending the coalition with Strache's party and calling a new general election. He picked members of his own party and experts to fill ministerial jobs, angering the right-wing party who sided with the Social Democrats to topple him.
