Karl Nehammer is a "personality of format and experience" and he will ensure stability in the government.

The echo from the regional divisions of the Austrian Christian Democrats sounded like this or similar on Friday after the previous interior minister had been lifted to the throne by the ÖVP party executive as the new chairman and future chancellor.

Of course, it was not to be expected that the new chairman would be the first to criticize, but it is fair to say that the regional princes of the ÖVP are satisfied.

Because they had a significant say in the revision.

Above all, the Governor of Lower Austria, Johanna Mikl-Leitner.

Stephan Löwenstein

Political correspondent based in Vienna.

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Sebastian Kurz had announced the day before when he surprisingly resigned that he wanted to arrange and accompany his successor.

And indeed, Nehammer has been a close colleague and supporter of Kurz in recent years, whether as Secretary General since 2017 or as Minister of the Interior since 2019.

But Kurz no longer has the decisive influence, also and especially no longer in his own party.

The "princes of darkness" are back

The fact that the governors have taken the reins could already be guessed from the circumstances under which Kurz had to leave the Chancellery at the beginning of October. Kurz had retained the party chairmanship and tried to steer the government vehicle from the back seat. The unfortunate Alexander Schallenberg, who was placed in the Chancellery by Kurz from the Foreign Ministry, had to sit in the driver's seat with his hands tied. Kurz was rarely seen in public in the following weeks, but you could hear from the federal states that he was trying to keep the party on the line, on his line.

But it was apparently received more coolly there than expected. The reason is obvious: under the impression of affairs and chats, Kurz's popularity has plummeted, and with it that of the party. In surveys, it is back at the level of around 20 percent at which Kurz took it over four and a half years ago. And that means that the chairman's right of access, which Kurz had at the time codified in the statute, is wasted. The disempowerment of the “princes of darkness”, as many a desperate ÖVP chairman had perceived the influential country leaders, is history.

This is now also reflected in the restructuring of the ÖVP government team that Nehammer presented on Friday. His successor in the Ministry of the Interior will be Gerhard Karner, a man from the Lower Austrian ÖVP power apparatus. He has shaped the house personally since the days of Ernst Strasser, who was once interior minister under Chancellor Wolfgang Schüssel. Attempts to tear this felt, by the FPÖ man Herbert Kickl like a coup, by the "Minister of Public Services" Wolfgang Peschorn with a finer blade, remained an episode.

But the other provinces are also playing a role: The Styrian legal scholar Martin Polaschek, Rector of the University of Graz, will become Minister of Education in place of Heinz Faßmann, who fought tiredly in the defense of open schools in the pandemic.

Vorarlberg's Magnus Brunner becomes finance minister in place of short confidante Gernot Blümel.

Up to now he was State Secretary in the Ministry of Infrastructure.