Austrian chancellor Werner Faymann resigns after far-Right election triumph

Werner Faymann, the Austrian chancellor, unexpectedly resigned on Monday, plunging the country into crisis.Mr Faymann, who has headed the Austrian government for eight years, is by far the biggest political casualty of the European migrant crisis.

His resignation comes with Austria already deeply divided, and with the far-Right poised to seize the country’s ceremonial presidency at elections in less than two weeks time.

“This country needs a chancellor whose party is fully behind him,” Mr Faymann’s spokesman said in a statement announcing his resignation on Monday morning.  

“The government needs a fresh start with energy. A chancellor who does not have this support cannot meet this challenge.”

Mr Faymann appears to have decided to jump before he was pushed.

He has been under mounting pressure over his handling of the migrant crisis and his Social Democrat party (SPÖ)’s disastrous performance in the presidential elections.

There have been calls for his resignation, and the party was to hold talks on Monday afternoon on bringing forward the party conference so his leadership could be challenged.

A spokesman confirmed he had resigned both as chancellor and as party leader.

The presidential election was the catalyst for Mr Faymman’s downfall.The SPÖ’s candidate was eliminated last month after coming a distant fourth in the first round of voting.

Meanwhile the far-Right Freedom Party (FPÖ) is on the verge of seizing the presidency after its candidate, the gun-toting Norbert Hofer, dominated the first round.

Mr Faymann was also facing pressure to drop the SPÖ’s long-standing commitment never to go into coalition with the Freedom Party, something he had indicated he would never agree to.

But it was his handling of the migrant crisis that saw voters desert the SPÖ and brought down his chancellorship.

He had been under attack from all sides since making an extraordinary U-turn over the crisis earlier this year.

Initially Mr Faymann backed Angela Merkel’s “open-door” refugee policy in neighbouring Germany, and for a time Austria was her closest ally over the crisis.

But as some 90,000 asylum-seekers arrived in Austria and public support for the policy collapsed, Mr Faymann made a dramatic reverse.

He closed Austria’s borders to migrants and imposed strict quotas on asylum-seekers.

Crucially, he became the leader of international efforts to close the so-called “Balkan Route” to migrants.

It was Mr Faymman’s campaign of coordinated border closures that stopped the advance of migrants across Europe.

They had already been confined to Greece before Mrs Merkel was able to secure the controversial EU deal with Turkey.

But Mr Faymann’s success over border closures appears not to have been enough to stop voters flocking to the anti-migrant Freedom Party.

And it also left him under attack from his former allies on the left of the party, who accused him of deserting principles.

Mr Faymann’s resignation leaves Austria’s future uncertain amid fears of the resurgent far-Right.

The Freedom Party’s Mr Hofer, who has carried a Glock pistol with him on the campaign trail, is favourite to win the presidency on May 22.