Sebastian Kurz was just 24 years old when he crashed Vienna’s political scene in 2010 on the hood of a jet-black Hummer emblazoned with the words “cool-O-mobile.” The slogan for his campaign for city council: “Black makes you cool.” Black is the color associated with Kurz’s party, the conservative Austrian People’s Party (ÖVP). But that wasn’t the only double entendre. The German word Kurz used for “cool,” geil, also means “horny.”

And so, when the party leadership tapped the fresh-faced law student to become state secretary for integration just a year later, the decision raised eyebrows within the ÖVP and guffaws outside it. The party is the bedrock of Austria’s Catholic, conservative establishment and Kurz, with this slicked back hair, open shirts and devil-may-care attitude seemed to embody the opposite of its staid traditions.

That Kurz, who became foreign minister in 2013, is now regarded as the ÖVP’s best — maybe only — hope for survival, says as much about the decline of Austria’s conservative establishment as it does about his political talents.

Over the past year, Kurz has put himself at the forefront of Europe’s debate over refugees, playing an instrumental role in crafting an agreement with Austria’s southern neighbors to close the so-called Balkan route, the primary path for refugees heading from Greece to Northern Europe. The move put Kurz at odds with Berlin and Brussels, but he held his course. Today, even German Chancellor Angela Merkel acknowledges Kurz’s intervention helped bring the refugee crisis under control.

Kurz has just turned 30, but no one jokes about his age or lack of a university degree anymore. The question surrounding Europe’s youngest foreign minister is: What’s next? The post of party leader is considered to be his for the taking. While the ÖVP has dipped to below 20 percent in the polls, leaving it a distant third behind the right-wing Freedom Party and the Social Democrats, Kurz’s personal ratings are the highest of any Austrian politician, and many in the country consider him the best option for preventing a Freedom Party politician from becoming chancellor.

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