Austria’s damage control blitz

 

Austria’s damage control blitz

By Nicholas Vinocur

January 13, 2025 7:02 am CET

https://www.politico.eu/newsletter/brussels-playbook/austrias-damage-control-blitz/

 

Brussels Playbook

By NICHOLAS VINOCUR

 

GOOD MONDAY MORNING. This is Nicholas Vinocur, kicking off the week. Sarah Wheaton will be with you on Tuesday.

 

DRIVING THE DAY: AUSTRIA IN BRUSSELS  Share on Twitter  Share on Facebook  Share on Linkedin  Share on Handclap

AUSTRIAN LEADER’S “DAMAGE CONTROL” TRIP: Austria’s interim leader Alexander Schallenberg is in town today to reassure top EU officials that his country isn’t headed down a dark path as the hardline right-winger Herbert Kickl prepares to become chancellor.

 

Schallenberg’s message: “Austria is and will remain a reliable, constructive and strong partner in the European Union and around the world,” according to comments shared with Playbook. “That was true for previous governments, it is true for this government and it should remain so in the next government.”

 

In other words: Don’t freak out about Kickl. We’ve got this under control.

 

**A message from TikTok: On TikTok, every under-18 teen account is automatically set to a 60-minute daily screentime limit. Parents can also monitor and set customisable screentime limits for their teens with our Family Pairing tool.**

 

Schallenberg’s argument: Even if Kickl emerges victorious from the talks about forming a new coalition government, which isn’t guaranteed, his power would be curtailed by a coalition agreement with the conservative Austrian People’s Party (ÖVP), as well as parameters set by Austrian President Alexander Van der Bellen.

 

Fine print: The contents of that coalition agreement are still being hashed out. But, per one EU diplomat, any deal is likely to contain language enshrining Austria’s membership in the EU and other possible guardrails regarding Russia and Ukraine. (Kickl is pro-Russia and said as recently as June that he wouldn’t rule out leaving the EU.)

 

In Brussels today: Schallenberg will deliver his message to European Parliament President Roberta Metsola in the morning, and to the EU’s top diplomat Kaja Kallas, the bloc’s Austrian Migration Commissioner Magnus Brunner and European Council President António Costa in the afternoon.

 

When to tune in: Schallenberg and Costa are due to hold a joint press conference at 4.15 p.m.

 

Behind the scenes: The former Austrian foreign minister spent the weekend speaking to leaders including German Chancellor Olaf Scholz and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, per an EU diplomat.

 

A piece of paper: The interim chancellor will do his best to convince the EU that a coalition deal would restrain Kickl. But there’s concern in Brussels about how ironclad such a deal would really be. While Kickl’s Freedom Party (FPÖ) has been in government three times since 2000 — when the EU moved to isolate Vienna diplomatically — the anti-immigration party has never been the larger partner. So there’s no guide to how it might behave once in power.

 

“I won, I decide”: Kickl said the results would have to take into account “who isn’t the winner” and the “mistakes of the past.”

 

Glass-half-full view: Kickl will be constrained by a coalition deal and might even mellow as chancellor, following in the footsteps of Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni.

 

Glass-half-empty view: Kickl is nothing like Meloni or even Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán. The latter is a known quantity whom other EU leaders view as transactional and fairly easy to negotiate with behind closed doors. Kickl, by contrast, is a “strict ideologue” and “not a politician,” according to another diplomat.

 

Making matters trickier, Austria is a net contributor to the EU, while Hungary is a net beneficiary in permanent need of European cash. When push comes to shove, the tactics Brussels used to rein in Budapest may not work with Vienna.

 

There’s also the fact that Kickl would join a pro-Russian faction in the European Council that already includes Orbán and Slovakian PM Robert Fico. Wait a few months, and that count could expand to include Czechia’s Andrej Babiš, whose populist ANO party is on course to win a parliamentary election this year. Oh, and Croatia’s pro-Russian Zoran Milanović has just won his country’s presidential election (though he doesn’t go to the Council meetings).

 

The bottom line: It’s easy to see why the EU is feeling jittery. Pro-Russian, hardline right-wingers aren’t just at the gates of power. They’ve got them half open and are rushing in. Schallenberg has his work cut out for him.

 

BONUS: An advance draft of the EU’s 2025 Annual Single Market and Competitiveness Report, obtained by our tech colleague Mathieu Pollet, sounds the alarm on slowing integration of the EU’s single market — something that won’t be helped by further anti-EU politicians joining the European leaders’ table. Read the draft here.

 

VON DER LEYEN HOSPITALIZED 

CHRONICLE OF AN ILLNESS UNTOLD: Late on Friday, German press agency DPA broke the news that European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen was hospitalized in Hanover for around a week during her battle with severe pneumonia, Eddy Wax writes in to report.

 

Impact: It came as a surprise, since for the past 10 days von der Leyen’s spokespeople had been downplaying the severity of her illness and insisting she was “keeping the business running” at all times, and because von der Leyen refused to relinquish any control to her number two, Teresa Ribera. Her illness has had real-world consequences, delaying legislation and the grand opening of Poland’s presidency of the EU.

 

“No update”: Eddy directly asked von der Leyen’s spokesperson Paula Pinho on Jan. 8: “Has the president been admitted to hospital?” The reply he got was: “As said, no update.” The lack of transparency about von der Leyen’s illness begs grave questions about the trustworthiness of her communications team — which essentially lied by omission to journalists who asked repeatedly about von der Leyen’s status —  and highlights her secretive leadership style.

 

What we still don’t know: When was von der Leyen admitted to hospital? When did she leave? Was she on a respirator during that period? How seriously ill actually was she? Von der Leyen appears to have done very little in the past two weeks, bar a phone call with Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni (announced Jan. 6) and Austrian Chancellor Alexander Schallenberg in recent days.

 

The Commission’s explanations, published in German media since the news broke, have been that she was never in intensive care and remained in daily contact with her team from the hospital. So why didn’t her team reveal what it knew?

 

How it played out: The first mention of von der Leyen’s brush with pneumonia came on Jan. 3, when deputy spokesperson Stefan de Keersmaecker said that the president was canceling her engagements for the first two weeks of January. He made no mention of the fact she had been in hospital (and we don’t know if she had been by that point).

 

Murky: It wasn’t until Jan. 6, when the Commission held its first press conference of the new year, that Pinho announced that it would be Ribera who would theoretically take over from von der Leyen were the president to be incapacitated. Pinho stressed there was “no need” for this, and again did not mention the hospitalization. All the Commission said at this point was that the president was recovering in Hanover (the part of Germany she calls home). News of her hospitalization did not break until Jan. 10.

 

Be careful of fake news online: “My team and I are ready to roll up our sleeves to work for stronger Europe, at home and abroad,” von der Leyen wrote on X Jan. 1. For all we know, she may have been in hospital when that post went up on her account.

 

 

SANCTIONS 

NEW YEAR, NEW ACTIVITY ON SANCTIONS: Kallas and German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock attended a gathering of top European and Middle Eastern diplomats to discuss the future of Syria in Riyadh on Sunday. Saudi Arabia pushed the EU representatives to ease sanctions on Syria to help the war-ravaged country rebuild after the overthrow of the brutal Assad regime, the Associated Press reports.

 

Preparing to ease: Playbook obtained the final version of a paper signed by France, Germany, the Netherlands, Spain, Finland and Denmark calling for sanctions relief for Syria. It relates particularly to transport between the EU and Syria, removing a ban on the export of oil and gas technology and assessing the need for reopening banking and investment relations with Syria.

 

The paper aims to pave the way for lifting sanctions when EU foreign ministers next meet at a Foreign Affairs Council in Brussels on Jan. 27. Kallas confirmed that easing sanctions will be on the agenda after Sunday’s meeting in Riyadh, though she said in a post on X that any relief “must follow tangible progress in a political transition that reflects Syria in all its diversity.”

 

Cautiously optimistic: In an interview, Baerbock told my Berlin-based colleague Gordon Repinski, who traveled with the German foreign minister to Riyadh, that the EU is trying to prevent ISIS and other bad actors from exploiting the transition in Syria. She said the de facto government’s messaging “sounds good so far,” but insisted the EU isn’t naïve about the origins of the ruling Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) as a “terrorist militia.”

 

“Whether this will be successful is in the hands of this transitional government,” Baerbock said. “But it’s also in the hands of many others — Iran, Russia — they are currently less active, but it’s unclear what could still happen. Turkey is pursuing its own security policy. I’m in intensive talks with Israel to convince them to stop their military actions there. And then, as I said, there are still all these other militias on the ground that have brutally exploited the past years of civil war.”

 

Also on the FAC agenda later this month: Sanctions on the owners of the “ghost fleet” ships that have been wreaking havoc on undersea cables in the Baltic Sea. Estonian lawmaker Riho Terras told Playbook that Baltic and Nordic countries would push for sanctions on the operators of the ghost ships as well as the countries that allow them to operate under their flag. “We have regular sabotage of important communication lines in the Baltic Sea … It is not an accident,” he said.

 

Sharing is caring: “In my opinion, it all starts with identifying ghost ships: information sharing between European countries, putting together lists, putting together sanctions against the countries that provide a flag to these ships and sanctions against the owners of the ships,” Terras added. “For sure there will be [sanctions] initiatives from the countries affected. It should not be country by country. We should deal with it in the framework of the EU and NATO.”

 

AND SPEAKING OF OIL SANCTIONS … The EU’s Baltic and Nordic countries teamed up in a letter over the weekend imploring Brussels to lower the oil price cap Western allies imposed on Russian oil. Our colleague Johanna Sahlberg in Berlin got her hands on a copy.

 

Context: The EU and G7 countries jointly approved a $60-per-barrel limit on Russian crude in late 2022, hoping to restrict the Kremlin’s war chest. But the measure has largely failed in the years since, with Moscow finding numerous loopholes and willing partners to keep business flowing.

 

What to do now? The countries behind the letter — Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Latvia, Lithuania and Sweden — argue that “now is the time” to reduce the price cap. Their rationale? First, the global market is “better supplied today than in 2022,” meaning a lower price cap is less likely to “cause a supply shock.” Second, Russia is so dependent on oil sales that it has “no alternative” but to keep exploring the product, “even at a substantially lower price.”

 

What else? The letter also calls for parallel action against the shadow fleet tankers keeping Moscow’s illicit oil business afloat, as well as anyone else aiding the above-price sales.

 

OK, but will it happen? There’s the rub. In the EU, Hungary doesn’t love tougher restrictions on Russian oil. And in the U.S., incoming President Donald Trump is a perpetual wild card.

 

BIDEN’S ENERGY SANCTIONS: The outgoing Biden administration on Friday unveiled a sweeping new range of measures designed to target Russia’s oil and gas exports, taking aim at the shadow fleet after more than a year of refusing to expand the list of sanctioned vessels. As many as 200 oil and gas tankers will now face restrictions, while administration officials told CNN the new move will “cost Russia upwards of a billion dollars per month.” But it’s not just Russia that could feel the squeeze, my colleague Gabriel Gavin reports.

 

This side of the Atlantic: Speaking to Morning Energy, Maria Shagina, a top sanctions expert at the International Institute for Strategic Studies, said the decision could have profound consequences for the European energy market. “The new determination gives authority to sanction those involved in the Russian energy sector, including LNG,” which Europe continues to buy large volumes of from Moscow. “That determination isn’t automatic but it could give the incoming Trump administration an opportunity to increase pressure on the EU to abandon Russian LNG.”

 

GERMANY AND FRANCE 

MERZ HAS BIG THOUGHTS ON EUROPE: Friedrich Merz, the frontrunner to be Germany’s next chancellor, will be talking a lot about Europe and foreign policy in the next few weeks of the election campaign — and specifically, the future of transatlantic relations during Donald Trump’s second presidency, according to my colleagues Rasmus Buchsteiner and Hans von der Burchard. They report in Berlin Playbook that Merz intends to make a keynote speech on Jan. 23, three days after Trump’s inauguration, explaining what the new U.S. administration will mean for Germany and Europe to an audience of political and diplomatic guests.

 

The best of frenemies: Merz could be good news for the EU if he becomes chancellor, according to France’s new Trade Minister Laurent Saint-Martin, despite all those years of friction between Paris and Berlin. “We can also look at the rather pro-European character of this would-be chancellor,” Saint-Martin told my colleagues Camille Gijs and Giorgio Leali on a visit to Brussels on Friday. “There are also good reasons to be optimistic.” Read their story here.

 

AfD looks abroad: Energized by Elon Musk’s public endorsement, the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) is increasingly looking to ideological allies overseas to give it the legitimacy it craves at home, POLITICO’s James Angelos writes. AfD delegates adopted a motion on Saturday to build closer relations between Germany and the U.S., and in particular with the future Trump administration — which one of its MEPs described as a “thank you” to Musk.

 

BAYROU’S NEXT BIG MOMENT: France’s new Prime Minister François Bayrou will face a huge test when he delivers his first policy speech to lawmakers on Tuesday, with many of the issues that led to the swift ouster of his predecessor Michel Barnier. My colleague Victor Goury-Laffont lays out four things to watch in the address.