Barely more than a decade after sharing classrooms with refugees, Kurz would boast of having closed the “Balkan route” that a new set of migrants was using to flee to Europe from wars or poverty elsewhere. Indeed, the issue of migration has defined Kurz’s political career and helped propel him to the chancellorship last October. He went on to form a coalition with the far-right Freedom Party (FPÖ), making Austria at the time the only Western European government with a far-right party in government. (Italy has since followed suit.) And Europe is following Kurz’s lead in other ways. His preoccupation with migration is shaping the agenda of the continent as a whole.

In one sense, quite literally: Austria has taken on the presidency of the Council of the EU. The six-month presidency, which rotates among all EU member states, is mainly responsible for planning and chairing meetings among members, but each country that holds the presidency gets to offer its priorities for the term. Austria’s is titled “A Europe That Protects.” Listed first is “Security and the fight against illegal migration.” Kurz has sought to forge alliances with immigration hardliners like Hungary’s Viktor Orban, and has put pressure on Germany’s Angela Merkel to toughen up her own, more open immigration policy. He has controversially proposed that Austria, Germany, and Italy should form an “axis of the willing” against illegal immigration—a suggestion that evoked memories of an earlier, Nazi-led Axis that also included Germany and Italy. And Kurz’s call for strengthening Europe’s borders against newcomers seems destined to be implemented; on Friday, the EU reached a deal to achieve just that.

A telling milestone on Kurz’s path to this moment occurred around three years ago, when the now-chancellor was still in his 20s. In September 2015, Vienna was an emotional place. It was shortly after the image of drowned Syrian three-year-old Alan Kurdi washed up on a Turkish beach was shown all over the world; after a truck with 71 suffocated refugees was found on an Austrian highway; after Germany declared that Syrian refugees wouldn’t be sent back to the EU country they first entered and chancellor Angela Merkel announced “Wir schaffen das” (“We can do it”). Thousands of refugees and migrants were arriving at Vienna’s Westbahnhof train station every day, most continuing their journeys to neighboring Germany. In Vienna, they were greeted by volunteers. High-ranking politicians, including the president and the interior minister, came as well. But Sebastian Kurz wasn’t among them. Given that he was then the minister for Europe, Integration, and Foreign Affairs, this seemed curious to some.

Virtually his whole national political career to that point—all four years of it—had been spent dealing with migration issues. He had first served as the Interior Ministry’s permanent secretary for integration—that is, the process of facilitating immigrants’ full participation in society. In that job, the then 24-year-old Kurz had received praise from liberal commentators for making the migration debate more “matter-of-fact,” demanding “integration through achievement,” and appointing “ambassadors of integration”—prominent Austrians who were immigrants or had immigrant parents. “Kurz knows that a heterogenous society functions when people come close to each other. In his discourse, foreigners are finally no longer just victims or perpetrators, but self-confident actors who decide their own fate,” Florian Klenk, the editor-in-chief of the liberal weekly newspaper Falter (for which I am a frequent contributor) wrote in October 2012. This was shortly after Kurz suggested a reform of the citizenship law that made it possible for people with “excellent integration” (like good German skills and contributing to society, for example through volunteer work) to receive citizenship faster. Back then, Kurz was in line with the pro-European stance of his party: When the far-right Freedom Party demanded that citizens from other EU countries should receive limited access to welfare, Kurz spoke out against it.