I T WAS “the greatest comeback since Lazarus,” said Werner Kogler. The leader of Austria’s Green party was describing its recovery from electoral oblivion last year. Four months ago the Greens were not even represented in parliament, having been wiped out in 2017. But on January 7th they were sworn into office as junior partners to the right-wing Austrian People’s Party ( ÖVP ), marking their first foray into national government. The new coalition also represents a resurgence of sorts for Sebastian Kurz, the young ÖVP leader now reinstated as chancellor of his third coalition. In 2017 Mr Kurz invited the far-right Freedom Party ( FPö ) into office, an experiment that collapsed last May amid a baroque scandal involving fake Russians and FPÖ corruption. In the ensuing election the ÖVP and Greens picked up the spoils, enabling a coalition few Austrians had thought possible.

The negotiations were oiled by an unexpected rapport between the two party leaders. Mr Kurz calls the unusual tie-up “the best of both worlds”. But the extensive ÖVP fingerprints on the deal will leave some Greens wondering. On migration and integration, Mr Kurz’s pet themes, the government will consider preventive detention for potentially violent asylum-seekers, ban headscarves for Muslim girls aged under 14 and block EU schemes to redistribute refugees. It will cut income and corporate taxes while aiming for balanced budgets.

To help sugar these pills, the Greens obtained one of Europe’s more ambitious climate-change programmes, including a pledge for carbon neutrality by 2040 and a plan to price emissions by 2022. They secured sharper party-financing rules and more aid spending, and will run a jumbo environment, energy and transport ministry. Party officials, eager for power after the wilderness years, backed the deal with gusto. Yet the Greens could have squeezed more out of Mr Kurz, says Thomas Hofer, an Austrian analyst. The coalition is less a meeting of minds than a division of fiefs.