(Repeats story first filed on Monday, no change in text)
* In 2000, EU ostracised Austria for far-right coalition
* Little sign of sanctions now if new government formed
* Migration crisis helped move EU politics to the right
* Austria 2000 also showed limits to EU power over states
By Robert-Jan Bartunek and Alastair Macdonald
BRUSSELS, Oct 17 (Reuters) - Seventeen winters ago, the European Union offered a very cold shoulder to a chancellor who brought Austria's far right into government, and some EU leaders even spoke of boycotting Tyrolean ski resorts in protest.
On Monday, the strong chance Sebastian Kurz's centre-right will invite the Freedom Party back into a Vienna coalition raised barely a murmur in Brussels. That said something about how the FPO has moved from its neo-Nazi past and a lot about how the rest of Europe has shifted rightward, especially on immigration.
An Austrian government led by a man who campaigned on tough border policies and featuring the FPO would, two years ago, have been "an earthquake" for Europe, a senior EU official said.
Now, following the crisis of 2015-16 in which over a million refugees and others came by sea to Greece and Italy, often then reaching Germany via Austria, critics of open doors have shifted Europe their way. Said another Brussels insider: "They've built the theatre that we are all playing in now."
A hard-nosed deal with Turkey to hold back Syrian refugees, tougher action on detaining and deporting failed asylum seekers, scaling back rescue boats and cooperation with Libyan forces have contributed to a substantial fall in new arrivals.
In Germany, where fellow travellers of the FPO damaged Chancellor Angela Merkel in an election last month, her bold welcome for refugees in 2015 has given way to support for ramped up border defences.
Congratulating the 31-year-old Kurz on Sunday's election victory, European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker alluded to concern about a eurosceptic government in Vienna.
The Brussels chief executive wished him success in forming a "stable, pro-European government". Juncker's spokesman would not say that the Commission was pressing Kurz to shun the FPO, as EU leaders did when Chancellor Wolfgang Schuessel formed a coalition with the party then led by Joerg Haider in 2000.
That February, nearly 18 years ago, Juncker as prime minister of Luxembourg was among the 14 EU leaders who barely spoke to Schuessel or his ministers for six months and later revised EU treaties to create powers to suspend renegade member states.
SKI BOYCOTT
There were harsh words. Belgium's foreign minister - father of its current premier Charles Michel - called on people not to take winter holidays in Austria. Yet current Belgian Foreign Minister Didier Reynders was one of many attending an EU meeting who politely congratulated their absent young Austrian colleague and said they looked forward to working with his new government.