The Constitutional Court of Austria [official website, in German] on Friday voided the results of Austria’s recent presidential election and ordered [press release] that the election be repeated in its entirety. The May 22 runoff saw Green Party-backed independent Alexander Van der Bellen [Telegraph profile] defeat Norbert Hoffer of the nationalist Freedom Party (FPO) [party website, in German] by only 30,863 votes [BBC report]. Considering a challenge brought by the FPO, the Constitutional Court found that the opening of votes cast by mail by “auxiliaries” outside of the presence of electoral officers prevented “definitive verification of the postal ballots.” Since more than 77,000 postal votes were cast, the court found that the potential manipulation of those ballots may have had an influence on the outcome. Noting the importance of strictly applying election laws, the court said that “[i]f infringements of the law are of an extent that they may have had an influence on the election result, it is of no relevance if manipulations have actually occurred or not.”

FPO is one of several right-wing parties making electoral inroads in Europe with a focus on skepticism over the role of the European Union (EU) on the continent. Along with its political allies, such as the French National Front, the Alternatives for Germany [party websites], and the British Leave Campaign [advocacy website], FPO has achieved some measure of popular support on a platform of urging significant reform of and/or withdrawal from the EU, tighter controls on immigration, and more direct democracy in their home country. Similar popular sentiment propelled British voters to choose to leave [JURIST report] the EU. Discussions of when, how and through whom the UK would invoke the withdrawal provisions in Article 50 [text] of the Lisbon Treaty are ongoing. In December, National Front candidates garnered more than 6 million [Atlantic report] in regional elections, although it did not win any of the contests in France’s 13 metropolitan regions. A concern over the effect of immigration and refugees of the conflict in Syria have been a driving force behind the success of nationalist movements in Europe, with some voters disapproving of the EU’s perceived openness to irregular migrants. In June, for example, the European Court of Justice ruled that migrants cannot be jailed [JURIST report] solely on the basis of crossing a border illegally.