Chancellor of Austria resigns over graft probe

Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Kurz announced his resignation on Saturday under mounting pressure of a corruption investigation. Kurz proposed that his ally, the current foreign minister Alexander Schallenberg, to take the job.

Kurz's decision came after a prosecutors' announcement last week that he was under a corruption probe, with calls from a coalition partner for him to step down and facing an upcoming no-confidence vote in parliament set for Tuesday.

"What we need now are stable conditions," said Kurz in a live television statement on Saturday.

"So, in order to resolve the stalemate, I want to make way to prevent chaos and ensure stability."

Kurz said he would nominate Schallenberg as new chancellor, while remaining as leader of his conservative Austrian People's Party, or OVP, and a member of parliament.

On Wednesday, prosecutors conducted raids in several locations linked to the party, including the chancellery and finance ministry. They said Kurz and nine other individuals were under investigation over claims that government money was used in a corrupt deal in exchange for positive media coverage.

Werner Kogler, vice-chancellor and leader of coalition partner the Greens, said on Friday that Kurz was "no longer fit for office "and asked the OVP to name another chancellor.

Kogler later indicated that his party would accept the nomination of the 52-year-old Schallenberg and would meet him on Sunday. The Greens have an interest to keep the current coalition so as to avoid new elections that may produce an undesirable alliance, which could include the right-wing populist Freedom Party.

Kurz has so far denied any wrongdoing, saying on Saturday that the allegations against him were "false".

"I will be able to clarify it; I'm sure about that," he said.

With his resignation announcement, Kurz avoided a parliamentary no-confidence motion which he stands no chance of surviving after the Greens' revolt against him.

Prosecutors said public money from the finance ministry was used to finance "partially manipulated opinion polls that served an exclusive party political interest "between 2016 and 2018. It correlates to the time when Kurz, who was the foreign minister at the time, became chairman of the OVP, and later head of a coalition government in 2017. He then became the youngest chancellor in Austria's history.

In 2019, Kurz's coalition with the Freedom Party collapsed in a corruption scandal involving the Freedom Party. But the OVP still won in new elections, forming a coalition with the Greens in January last year.

Oliver Grimm, a Brussels-based journalist for Austrian newspaper Die Presse, wrote in a tweet that "though he's leaving, he stays in power", referring to Kurz remaining the head of the OVP and leader of the parliamentary group.

Andrew Adonis, chairman of the European Movement based in the United Kingdom, said Kurz's resignation over corruption was hours after Czech's populist leader lost an election and three days after Matteo Salvini was wiped out in Italy's local elections, and two weeks after Olaf Scholz won the German elections.

"Centrism is back big time across Europe! Yippee," he wrote in a tweet.

The center-right Together coalition narrowly won the Czech parliamentary election on Saturday ahead of Prime Minister Andrej Babis' ANO party, but failed to secure a majority.

Agencies contributed to the story.