| Austria is charged with political electricity, but it’s not because of the upcoming EU elections in June. Bigger events are looming only three months later: the national election that might put the far-right in charge of the Alpine country. In less than a month Austria chooses 20 EU lawmakers to represent it in Brussels and Strasbourg. Despite the speeches about the importance of the EU, Austrian candidates are boilerplate backbenchers – unlike neighbouring Germany, where talk-show clashes between local political firebrands and Commission President Ursula von der Leyen are looming large, while in France, EU election clashes happen daily. But Austrian party slates feature political has-beens, like centre-right Österreichische Volkspartei’s (ÖVP) Reinhold Lopatka – who last held a relevant position in 2017 – or the eternal far-right Freiheitliche Partei Österreichs (FPÖ) networker Harald Vilimsky – who after 10 years in parliament, looks to continue his pet project of uniting the German-speaking far-right with those in Italy and Hungary. The centre-left Sozialdemokratische Partei Österreichs (SPÖ) put forward Andreas Schieder – who remains an unknown after leading the party to a massive defeat in the 2019 EU elections. Like the candidates, the political slogans stem from a lack of motivation. Lopatka promises ‘Europe. But better’ while the Greens say ‘Europe needs heart’. The FPÖ appears to churn out posters at the same rate as all the other parties combined putting some zing into their campaign, with a particularly tasteless image of von der Leyen kissing Ukrainian President Volodomyr Zelenksyy, linking them to “Eco-Communism” and “warmongering”: The European Election is, in fact, a rehearsal for the real thing: Just three months later, sometime in September, the country’s biggest parliamentary election of the decade will take place. Politicians will face the music in the form of the bill for COVID-19-related spending and the inflation that followed Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. | 