August Wginger was also unanimously elected the first deputy chairman of the club, the VP announced in a broadcast. “We will work together with all our might for the people in Austria”, said Kurz and Wginger after the election in the VP Parliamentary Club. Kurz will not be sworn in as a member of parliament until Thursday.
He will therefore neither attend tomorrow’s special session nor the regular session on Wednesday at which his confidant Finance Minister Gernot Blmel will give his budget speech.
In the run-up to the meeting, no critical voices were heard against the party leader, who had resigned from the Chancellery on charges of corruption and is now moving to parliament. In the past few years, Kurz had been a “reliable partner” for the economy as Chancellor, according to Chamber of Commerce Secretary General and Mandate Karlheinz Kopf. Now Kurz has “correctly” taken a “step to the side” in order to “take the pressure off”. It would be a “very respectable result” for him as club boss, said Kopf at the beginning of the meeting, and he was right.
Representatives of the VP government team also attended the meeting, including Agriculture Minister Elisabeth Kstinger, Defense Minister Klaudia Tanner and the new Chancellor Alexander Schallenberg.
