Though small, Austria has for centuries enjoyed outsize influence as a crossroads at the heart of Europe. Its neutral status, neither officially allied with NATO nor Russia, means that for centuries it has served as an arena for politicians, diplomats and spies trying to tilt the geopolitical balance.

Austria's Freedom Party leader Herbert Kickl hailed a "new era" after preliminary results showed Sunday that the FPÖ had become the first far-right party to win in the country's parliamentary election since World War II,

As forecast in the polls, a hard-right populist party came first in Austria’s parliamentary elections on September 29th for the first time in the country’s post-war history. The anti-immigrant Freedom Party (FPÖ),