Austria’s far-right Freedom Party moves towards government after collapse of centrist coalition bid to keep them out following first place election victory in last year’s elections

Austria headed towards coalition talks led by the far-right Freedom Party on Sunday after attempts to form a government without the party split and prompted Chancellor Karl Nehammer to resign.

Nehammer, who announced late on Saturday that he would resign, had led three- and then two-party talks aimed at forging a centrist coalition that could serve as a bulwark against the Freedom Party (FPO), after the Eurosceptic, Russia-friendly party was the first came into battle. September’s parliamentary elections.

Nehammer’s conservative People’s Party (OVP) on Sunday appointed Secretary General Christian Stocker as its new leader in an interim position.

Stocker had long reiterated Nehammer’s position that the OVP would not govern together with FPO leader Herbert Kickl, but he said things had now changed.

‘I expect that the leader of the party with the most votes will be given the task of forming a future government. If we are invited to these (coalition) talks, we will accept the invitation,” Stocker told reporters.

“So it is not about Herbert Kickl or me, but about the fact that this country needs a stable government now and that we cannot continue to lose time in election campaigns or elections,” he said.

President Alexander Van der Bellen, a former leader of the left-wing Greens who has expressed reservations about Kickl becoming chancellor, angered the FPO by not asking it to form a government after the election, on the grounds that no some other party was willing to join it. in a coalition.

Although Van der Bellen said the situation had now changed, he did not say he would ask Kickl to lead coalition talks. He will meet Kickl at 11 a.m. on Monday and a new interim chancellor will also be appointed in the coming week, with Nehammer remaining in office until then.

Austrian Chancellor and head of the People’s Party (OeVP) Karl Nehammer and the chairman of the Social Democrats Andreas Babler and head of the NEOS party Beate Meinl-Reisinger give a press statement after coalition talks in Vienna, Austria, December 17, 2024

Karl Nehammer (photo) said about the talks between his conservative People’s Party and the Social Democrats: ‘We have tried everything so far’

‘The voices within the People’s Party that rule out cooperation with an FPO under Herbert Kickl have become much quieter. This in turn means that a new path may open up that did not exist before,” Van der Bellen said in an address to the nation.

If Kickl is tasked with leading coalition talks, his party could win a parliamentary majority and lead a government for the first time since its formation in the 1950s under a leader who had been a senior SS officer and Nazi lawmaker.

The collapse of centrist coalition talks in Austria highlights the growing difficulty for centrist parties in many European countries to form stable governments without the far right gaining ground.

The FPO won the September elections with around 29% of the vote, and opinion polls show that support has increased since then, expanding its lead over the OVP and the Social Democrats to more than 10 percentage points, while their support has shrunk .

Nehammer said during and after the election campaign that his party would not govern with Kickl because he was too much of a conspiracy theorist and posed a security risk, while at the same time saying that much of Kickl’s party was trustworthy.

The OVP and the FPO overlap on several issues, most notably taking a hard line on immigration, to the point that the FPO has accused the OVP of stealing its ideas.

The two ruled together from late 2017 until 2019, when a video scandal involving the then leader of the FPO led to the collapse of their coalition.

The FPO made its message clear earlier on Sunday.

“Austria now needs a Chancellor Kickl,” it said on social media platform X.