Wednesday, June 27, 2018

As Merkel teeters, Austria's Kurz seizes the moment as Europe's 'rock star of the new right'

Via Billy

Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Kurz gestures while speaking during the Christian Democrat Union (CDU) Business Day in Berlin on June 12, 2018. Photo: Bloomberg Photo By Krisztian Bocsi. / © 2018 Bloomberg Finance LP

By 24, Sebastian Kurz was a member of the Austrian Cabinet. By 27, he was his country's foreign minister. And by 31, the debonair university dropout with the slicked-back mane and the Hollywood grin became the world's youngest leader.

Now, just six months into his term as chancellor, Kurz is seizing a febrile moment in European politics to make himself into one of the continent's true power players.

In the next few weeks alone, he is trying to seal off Europe from asylum seekers arriving by sea, orchestrate a summit between President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin and, critics say, undermine Germany's Angela Merkel, the most consequential European leader of the past decade.

More @ LMT

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