Britain’s vote to leave the European Union may inspire a copycat effort in Austria, the first move in a potential chain reaction that many opponents of Brexit feared may result from the vote.
Norbert Hofer, the right-wing Freedom Party candidate who narrowly lost the presidential election in May, warned in an interview published Sunday that Austrians might seek a referendum of their own on leaving the EU if the European Parliament does not change course.
If within the next year the EU does not reverse centralization, “then we must ask Austrians whether they want to be members,” Hofer told the newspaper Oesterreich, according to a Reuters report.
Hofer fell just short of election in May running on a euroskeptic platform critical of EU immigration policies. Many of the same concerns were highlighted by British “Leave” campaigners in their effort to exit the EU.
The prospect of an Austrian exit, or “Auxit,” is just one of many possible repercussions from Thursday’s vote in the U.K.
Voters, investors and others are watching closely for signs of whether Scotland will again try to leave the U.K., and down the line whether nations like France and the Netherlands — which have both voted against approving EU membership in the past — will seek their own exits.
