Austria Fears rise over prospect of far-right election win

After topping the Austrian poll in June's EU elections, the far-right Freedom party (FPÖ) seized the moment, calling for the appointment of an EU "remigration" commissioner to be tasked with the forced return of migrants and citizens with a migration background to their countries of origin.

- Ashifa Kassam

The muted reaction that followed was a sharp contrast to Germany, where months earlier, allegations that members of the farright Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) had attended a meeting at which they discussed remigration dominated headlines and prompted tens of thousands to take to the streets in protest.

Farid Hafez, a senior researcher at Georgetown University, Washington DC, said: "In Austria they suggested openly that the European Union should have a commissioner for migration and there was no outcry. This is the normalisation of racism that the far right has achieved and that has become a very normal part of daily Austrian politics."

This view will be tested on Sunday as Austrians vote in parliamentary elections. Polls suggest that the anti-immigrant, anti-Islam FPÖ, founded in the 1950s by former Nazis, could narrowly emerge with the most votes for the first time in the country's postwar history.