IT IS a measure of populism’s rise that the announcement of a coalition deal between the centre-right Austrian People’s Party (ÖVP) and the right-wing Austrian Freedom Party (FPÖ) on December 16th caused barely a ruffle. When the two last formed a government, back in 2000, the news provoked diplomatic sanctions: visits and meetings were cancelled. No longer exceptional, Austria faces no sign of any such quarantine in Europe today.

To be sure, there are concerns in Berlin and Brussels. The FPÖ, which has a “co-operation agreement” with Vladimir Putin’s United Russia party and is close to the autocratic leaders of Hungary and Poland, will henceforth run Austria’s foreign, interior and defence ministries—and with them the country’s diplomatic and security services. But this is a shift of degree, not direction: the Alpine republic has long been doveish on Russia and closer to the central Europeans than to Angela Merkel on both immigration and Islam. The coalition agreement commits Austria to the EU and the euro, and Sebastian Kurz, the incoming chancellor, will take over European competences that used to sit in the foreign ministry (as did he).

If Austria in 2000 presaged the recent populist surge, the country’s new government, too, may contain glimpses of wider trends. (Something similar already exists in Norway, where the Conservatives govern in alliance with the more populist Progress Party.) Taking over as leader only in July, Mr Kurz took his ÖVP from third place to first by melding a modern style (sidelining the dinosaurs and recruiting candidates from outside politics) with a commitment to do something about Austrian economic underperformance, coupled with an uncompromisingly right-wing stance on crime and immigration. Conservatives elsewhere in Europe are watching with interest. Jens Spahn, a junior German finance minister who is regarded as a possible successor to Mrs Merkel, snapped selfies with Mr Kurz at the ÖVP’s election-night party on October 15th.

Meanwhile, the FPÖ’s revival—its six-year spell in government from 2000 split the party and cost it half of its voters—under Heinz-Christian Strache is a model for populist nationalists. “HC”, as he is known, gave the party a more youthful image, embraced social media before other politicians and rejected the FPÖ’s erstwhile anti-Semitism (recognising Jerusalem as Israel’s capital long before Donald Trump) in favour of an anti-Islam credo. France’s National Front and the Alternative for Germany party have both taken inspiration from his strategy.

The coalition agreement is a synthesis of the two men’s political projects. Maintenance payments for accepted refugees will more than halve to €365 a month, and newcomers will have to hand over any cash they have and waive some rights to medical secrecy. Islamic schools will be monitored more closely and closed if they break rules or accept foreign funding. Drugs and sex crimes will attract tougher sentences. Over 2,000 more police will patrol the streets. Income and corporation tax will fall. Austria’s corporatist labour and welfare model will be liberalised: maximum working time will rise to 12 hours a day, for example, and job-based insurance funds will be consolidated.

But can Mr Kurz avoid being forced to make less palatable concessions to the FPÖ? Some in Vienna (including Die Presse, an ÖVP-friendly newspaper) compare him to David Cameron, another metropolitan conservative reliant on the Eurosceptic right. “What Tory hardliners were for Cameron the FPÖ could be for Kurz,” predicts Josef Lentsch, a think-tanker who is close to the liberal NEOs party, adding that although an “Öxit” referendum on EU membership is off the cards, the new chancellor will soon find himself under pressure to pick fights with Brussels and edge closer to the nationalist governments to the east. “I trust that the Austrian government will continue to play a constructive and pro-European role,” said Donald Tusk, president of the European Council, on December 18th. Behind the affirmation lay a none-too-subtle warning.