Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Kurz announced on Saturday his intention to step down in an attempt to defuse a government crisis sparked by the public prosecutor's announcement that he had become the target of a corruption investigation.
Kurz, 35, said he had proposed appointing Foreign Minister Alexander Schallenberg as his replacement.
Kurz himself plans to take over the leadership of the parliamentary group of his Austrian People's Party.
Kurz's party showed solidarity with him after the prosecutor's announcement, Wednesday, but his junior partner in the coalition, the Green Party, on Friday refused Kurz's continuation as chancellor and demanded his party nominate "a perfect person" to replace him.
Opposition leaders had called on Kurz to leave and were planning to submit a motion of no-confidence to parliament on Tuesday.
"What we need now are stable conditions, so in order to resolve the impasse, I want to make room to prevent chaos and ensure stability," Kurz told reporters in Vienna.
Kurz and his close associates are accused of trying to secure his rise to leadership of his party and the country, of manipulating opinion polls, and of pushing friendly reports in the media, funded by public money.
Kurz, who became People's Party leader and then chancellor in 2017, denied any wrongdoing and made clear he intended to remain in office, before deciding on Saturday otherwise.
In his statement, Saturday, he insisted again that the accusations against him are false, and said: "I will be able to clarify that, I am fully convinced of that."
Kurz said he would retain the leadership of his party and become the leader of his parliamentary group.
The prosecution said in a statement, last Wednesday, after searches, that "Sebastian Corz and nine other suspects, as well as three organizations" are under investigation for several irregularities related to this case.
The inspections targeted the headquarters of the Ministry of Finance and the Chancellery, according to Austrian media.
The prosecution noted that between 2016 and 2018, "the ministry's resources were used to fund partially manipulated opinion polls that served an exclusively partisan political interest."
At this time, Kurz was not yet a chancellor, but was a government minister.
According to the prosecutors, a media group "received payments" in return for publishing these opinion polls.
The Austrian media revealed that the media outlet in question was the newspaper "Ostreich" (Austria).
Kurz is already under investigation for making false statements to a parliamentary commission on corruption, but he has not yet been charged.
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