Forget Brexit. The EU's nightmare is Austria's lurch to the Far Right says MARK ALMOND

A sudden storm in the Alps shouldn't take anyone by surprise. But the EU's governing elite was utterly unprepared for the mighty thunderclap of the Austrian election on Sunday.

It has ushered into power not only the youngest leader on the world stage, but one who is poised to form a government with a Far Right party — one that was founded by a former Nazi — which campaigned on an extreme nationalist, Eurosceptic and anti-immigration ticket.

Indeed, the success of the centre-Right Christian Democrat Austrian People's Party (OVP) led by 31-year-old Sebastian Kurz is attributed in part to mimicking the Far Right Freedom Party's (FPO) stance on several issues including immigration — while borrowing a Trumpism or two — with a call-to-arms of 'Austrians First'.

Brussels told Sebastian Kurz (pictured), who is poised to become the continent¿s youngest leader, that he must form a ¿pro-European government¿

Brussels told Sebastian Kurz (pictured), who is poised to become the continent's youngest leader, that he must form a 'pro-European government'

Celebrations in Vienna as news filters through about the far-right Freedom Party's faring in the polls 

Celebrations in Vienna as news filters through about the far-right Freedom Party's faring in the polls 

Demonstrators hold a banner reading 'F**k Strache! - Refugees welcome' and posters reading 'Nazis out of parliament' as they protest a possible government participation of Austria's far-right Freedom Party (FPO) led by Heinz-Christian Strache

Demonstrators hold a banner reading 'F**k Strache! - Refugees welcome' and posters reading 'Nazis out of parliament' as they protest a possible government participation of Austria's far-right Freedom Party (FPO) led by Heinz-Christian Strache

The leader of the right-wing Austrian Freedom Party (FPOe) Heinz-Christian Strache (centre) waves as he arrives for the FPOe's election party after the Austrian Federal Elections, in Vienna, Austria, October 15, 2017

The leader of the right-wing Austrian Freedom Party (FPOe) Heinz-Christian Strache (centre) waves as he arrives for the FPOe's election party after the Austrian Federal Elections, in Vienna, Austria, October 15, 2017

Not for the first time in recent European history, it was a call that, allied to the promise of tougher policies on immigration, had enormous appeal to voters across the political spectrum disillusioned with the status quo, fearful of the future, and angry that their concerns were not being listened to.

Initial results indicate the OVP and the FPO attracted more than 50 per cent of Austrians — a staggering proportion — who were voting against the European tradition of centre-party consensus.

For the first time in Austria's political history, two Right-wing parties managed to increase their seats without taking votes from each other in a dramatic illustration of voters' desire for change.

And the key issue? Migration. Last year, Austria's population of 8.7 million rose one per cent as tens of thousands of Iraqis, Syrians, Afghans arrived en masse via the so-called Balkans route.

A coalition between the OVP and FPO will herald a new Right-wing alliance with Poland, Hungary and other Central European countries concerned about Muslim refugees. But whereas the European Commission holds the whip hand over recipients of EU subsidies in the old Communist countries, affluent Austria can't be similarly threatened.

So if smug Eurocrats were shaken by the outcome of the German election last month, with the surge in support for the Far Right AfD — another anti-immigration party — then the events of the weekend are a seismic development.

On top of Brexit, Catalonia's bid for independence, the growing discontent of Eastern European member states, and Greece's endless debt problems, Brussels now must contend with Austria's sudden transformation from model member to bad boy.

And it is precisely the youth of the next Austrian Chancellor which is a factor that bewilders Brussels. Immersed in politics since the age of 17 when he joined the OVP, Sebastian Kurz ought to be the living embodiment of the European ideal, not least because he is too young to remember anything else.

Decades of Euro-propaganda and the experience of growing up in the EU were supposed to have inoculated younger votes against the virus of nationalist nostalgia.

Not so young Herr Kurz. The son of a teacher and a technician, Kurz was born in the Meidling district of Vienna where he still lives, and after military service attended law school but failed to graduate.

Politics was his obsession and his meteoric rise through the OVP began when he became chairman of the youth wing before being made Austria's youngest departmental head at 27 in charge of integration. Three years later he was foreign minister — the voice of Austria in the world.

At first sight, in his smart but casual suits with his slicked-back hair and usually accompanied by his attractive girlfriend, Susanne Thier — they've been together since he was 18 — Roman Catholic Kurz looks to be the very model of modern Eurocrat.

But his delinquency from an EU perspective was soon in evidence: he attacked Europe's open borders and plans to redistribute predominantly Muslim migrants around member states.

He blamed Brussels for mishandling the British so that we ended up voting to leave the EU. And in the past year he oversaw the stationing of tanks and erection of barbed wire fences at the Brenner Pass to back up border controls to stop African and Middle Eastern migrants crossing the Alps from Italy.

He also supported the Islamgesetz legislation that banned foreign funding of mosques and prohibited radical versions of the Koran, and claims to have been instrumental in the so-called burka ban.

At the same time, Kurz built on his reputation as a canny political operator with a gift for eye-catching PR stunts; in the 2010 Viennese council elections he campaigned from cars branded Geilomobils — geil means both 'cool' and 'horny' in German — and handed out condoms on the street while talking about losing his virginity at 15.

Austrian Foreign Minister and leader of the conservative Austrian Peoples Party (OeVP) Sebastian Kurz and his girlfriend Susanne Thier leave after casting their ballot in Austrian parliamentary elections on October 15, 2017 in Vienna, Austria

Austrian Foreign Minister and leader of the conservative Austrian Peoples Party (OeVP) Sebastian Kurz and his girlfriend Susanne Thier leave after casting their ballot in Austrian parliamentary elections on October 15, 2017 in Vienna, Austria

When the election was called in May, Kurz seized his opportunity to makeover the OVP in his own image. The traditional colour black was dumped in favour of turquoise and it developed into a 'movement' centred around this leader who lived up to his nickname of Wunderwuzzi (boy who can perform miracles) with a pitch-perfect campaign that persuaded Austrians, especially the young voters, that he could deliver change.

Restoring order and security were his watchwords and his manifesto called for illegal migration into Europe to be stopped, benefits cut for asylum seekers and a ban on welfare payments to non-Europeans unless they'd lived in Austria for five years.

Of course, given Austria's grisly Nazi history, anything tinged with nationalism sets alarm-bells ringing. But it is not a return to the unholy past which Kurz represents, but a glimpse into an uncomfortable future as the FPO shares centre stage.

During the election campaign, FPO members were spotted wearing a blue cornflower — a secret symbol used by the Nazis when they were a banned party in Austria in the Thirties.

Meanwhile, the party leader Heinz-Christian Strache, 48, now tipped to become vice- chancellor, stands accused in a new book called Silent Takeover, by Austrian writer Hans-Henning Scharsach of secretly masterminding a political coup by Austrian neo-Nazis, and of greeting other party members with a Hitler salute.

The book claims he used to order his underlings to address him as 'Gauleiter' — the term for the regional Nazi boss during Hitler's rule — while one of his closest allies is accused of wanting to restore the Nazi Anschluss, the Austro-German 'union'.

When he was 20, Strache was arrested for taking part in a march organised by a banned neo-Nazi movement modelled on the Hitler Youth.

He has also been accused of thinly veiled anti-Semitism. Throughout his political career Strache has insisted he is not a Nazi, and that his actions have been misunderstood and misrepresented by his political opponents.

The election shows how great a driver of votes is antagonism towards Muslims. Anti-Islam has a long history in Austria, from 1683 when the Turks besieged Vienna.

And recently decades of migration from Turkey has changed the make-up of Vienna and other big cities with the growth of what the FPO describe as 'Muslim ghettos' populated by 'jihadists'.

In a letter of congratulations, European Commission president Jean-Claude Juncker indirectly warned Mr Kurz about attaching himself with the Eurosceptic party founded by former Nazis

In a letter of congratulations, European Commission president Jean-Claude Juncker indirectly warned Mr Kurz about attaching himself with the Eurosceptic party founded by former Nazis

In 2016, that surge of Syrian war refugees and other migrants reawakened half-forgotten nightmares of Muslim sieges. The mood-swing that saw more than half the voters back anti-immigration parties was more to do with Kurz's promise not to give in to Brussels on Muslim migration than nostalgia for Hitler.

Maybe Brussels hopes to tame Kurz, but Wunderwuzzi knows his popularity could fade fast if he reneges on his electoral promises and drifts back to the centre. That is the hold the FPO now has over Austrian politics. Either they share power now or they'll increase their share of the vote even more dramatically next time because they would be the only opposition.

And it is this which makes the Austrian election so destabilising for a wobbly EU where discontent with Brussels's agenda keeps bubbling to the surface.

The new French President Emmanuel Macron was supposed to be the youthful face of the EU's future, but now in Kurz he has a rival almost a decade younger whose beliefs raise awkward questions about the whole direction of Europe.

What is happening in Central Europe is not a literal turning back of the clock. The Brownshirts won't march through Vienna tomorrow. But what is coming is certainly not the cosy future the Euro-ideologues had anticipated.

The consensus which Brussels is still trying to shore up is dead and gone, and a new Europe is emerging which the EU has not planned for.

If Brussels sticks rigidly to an agenda that was never put to the voters, it risks seeing more and more politicians like Sebastian Kurz elected. His face is probably Europe's future, but it won't be a united Europe.

■ MARK ALMOND is director of the Crisis Research Institute, Oxford.