Austria vote must be 'read carefully' says Celik

By Meltem Bulur

ANKARA (AA) – The result of Austria’s presidential election, in which a far-right nationalist party took around 47 percent of the vote, should be read carefully, Turkey’s EU minister said on Monday.

According to preliminary results, independent Alexander Van der Bellen won Austria's presidential poll on Sunday, defeating far-right Freedom Party candidate Norbert Hofer.

State-run broadcaster ORF announced that Van der Bellen received 53.3 percent of the vote while Hofer took 46.7 percent.

Turkey's EU Affairs Minister Omer Celik took to Twitter to say although the Freedom Party lost the contest, the vote showed its political influence had increased.

He said promoting extreme-right and racist ideas in key EU countries would create major problems.

“Even though the far-right has lost numerically, it has risen in politically in Austria,” Celik wrote.

Celik added that 47 percent of the popular vote "for [a] far-right candidate must be read very carefully for the sake of European politics".

On July 1, Austria’s Constitutional Court annulled the results of May’s presidential election and called for a rerun.

Gehart Holzinger, the court’s president, had ordered a repeat of the run-off vote which saw former Green leader Van der Bellen narrowly beat Hofer.

The court said the election would have to be repeated nationwide after the discovery of irregularities in the count in several voting districts.