At 31 years of age, Sebastian Kurz is poised to become the world’s youngest head of state and is expected to lead Austria at the head of a centre-right government coalition. Kurz has rejuvenated his Austrian People’s Party (OVP) and barnstormed across the nation of 8.7 million in a general election campaign that saw his party along with the FPO, a far-right group with neo-Nazi links and ideologies, increase their support and erode the traditional support for Austria’s Social Democrats. That party, under Christian Kern, finished second, with 27 per cent of the popular vote, just ahead of the FPO, which registered 25.9 per cent with voters when the provisional final results were announced.

Kurz’s victory now means that he has a mandate to implement the tax cuts he promised – and to implement anti-Islamic policies that proved popular on the campaign trail. And in the FPO, Kurz will have a government partner only too willing to assist. The new Austrian chancellor and his party have been accused of playing fast and loose with the facts during the campaign, and there are reports they doctored an academic report on Islamic nurseries to support their call for a ban on burqas.

Kurz’s election in Austria continues an alarming trend across Europe that has seen parties of the right gain momentum, particularly after the summer of 2015 when more than a million desperate and desolate refugees from Syria and Iraq, as well as North Africa, flooded into the continent in search of a better life after fleeing violence and repression in their home nations.

That influx has led to a dramatic increase in anti-Muslim sentiment, with Islamophobia being used by political and social forces on the right as the prime example of all that is wrong in western societies.

In France, Marine Le Pen’s National Front was unapologetic in its anti-Muslim stance, so too in the Netherlands and the Freedom Party of Geert Wilders; while in Germany, Alternative for Germany has now become the first far-right party in 72 years to break through that nation’s 5 per cent clause and take some 90 seats in the Bundestag in last month’s federal election.

If there is any consolation, it is that the checks and balances in place in mature European nations protect the human and legal rights of all those who reside in Europe. It must be up to Brussels, the European Court of Justice and the European Commission now to ensure that the rights of all citizens and those living in European states are respected equally.