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Concept
Alexander Van der Bellen
Summary
Alexander Van der Bellen (alɛˈksandɐ fan deːɐ̯ ˈbɛlən; born 18 January 1944) is the current president of Austria. He previously served as a professor of economics at the University of Vienna, and after joining politics, as the spokesman of the Austrian Green Party.
Van der Bellen was born in Austria to Russian and Estonian aristocrats who were refugees from the occupation of the Baltic states, and he became a naturalized citizen of Austria together with his parents in 1958. He is a descendant of the former Russian Empire's aristocratic Van der Bellen family of patrilineal Dutch ancestry dating back to 18th century.
He was a member of the National Council representing the Green Party there from 1994 to 2012, and served as both leader of the party as well as its parliamentary group.
He ran as a nominally independent candidate supported by the Greens in the 2016 presidential election, and finished second out of six in the first round before winning the second round against Norbert Hofer, a member of the Freedom Party. On 1 July, before he was due to be sworn into office, the results of the second round of voting were annulled by the Constitutional Court due to absentee votes being improperly counted too early, requiring the election to be re-held. On 4 December 2016, he won the ensuing election, taking approximately 54% of the vote.
Van der Bellen has described himself as a centrist liberal, and supports green and social liberal policies. As discussed in his 2015 book, he is supportive of the European Union and advocates European federalism. During the presidential election, he appealed to the political centre and was endorsed by the leaders of both the Social Democratic Party and the conservative People's Party. Van der Bellen is the second Green president of a European Union country (after Raimonds Vējonis of Latvia) and the first to be directly elected by popular vote.
In the 18th century, Van der Bellen's patrilineal ancestors emigrated from the Netherlands to the Russian Empire.
Official source
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