Vienna - A local election win by Austria's far-right Freedom Party will force Chancellor Viktor Klima's coalition to soften its support for EU expansion ahead of European and national polls, political analysts said yesterday.
"The government will have to soften more and more its old pro-enlargement stance," Mr Andreas Unterberger, chief editor of the daily Die Presse said.
The nationalist party of Mr Jorg Haider, branded a crypto-Nazi in the past, scored its biggest electoral success to date on Sunday by winning 42 per cent of the vote in the state of Carinthia.