Austria is one step away from forming a far-right government

Austria’s chances of having for the first time since 1945 a far-right head of government have become feasible this weekend, after unsuccessful attempts to form a government that would remove Herbert Kickl’s ultra FPÖ party, winner of the September elections, from power.

The country’s president, the progressive Alexander van der Bellen, who has never hidden his reluctance to accept Kickl as federal chancellor, announced that he will receive the ultra leader this Monday.

“Voices within the (conservative party) ÖVP that ruled out cooperation with Kickl have weakened” following the withdrawal of Karl Nehammer – acting federal chancellor – as president of the party, said the head of state in a brief televised appearance from the Hofburg Palace, seat of the presidency.

Events have accelerated since last Friday, when the small Neos (neoliberal) party announced that it was abandoning ongoing negotiations with conservatives and social democrats on a three-party coalition.

That was the option favored by the president, who then urged the conservatives and social democrats to continue negotiating an agreement even though they would only have a very narrow majority in Parliament, 92 of the total 183 seats.

The turn of the conservatives

However, late on Saturday, the two traditional parties acknowledged, amid mutual accusations, that they could not overcome their programmatic differences, especially over the formulas to reduce the excessive budget deficit.

“We are ending the negotiations with the SPÖ (Social Democratic Party) and will not continue them,” said the outgoing Federal Chancellor, Karl Nehammer, in a video published on X in which he simultaneously announced his resignation.

“I will leave my position as chancellor and leader of the ÖVP in the coming days and will allow an orderly transition,” declared the politician, who in 2021 succeeded his co-religionist Sebastian Kurz in both positions, who in turn resigned. in the middle of a corruption scandal.

In an extraordinary and urgent meeting, the leadership of the conservative party today named Christian Stocker, until now general secretary of the party, as its interim president, replacing Nehammer, and expressed its willingness to negotiate a coalition with the ultras.

“I hope that the leader of the most voted party will receive the task of forming a future government,” Stocker told the press after his appointment, minutes after the country’s president announced that he would receive Kickl.

Van der Bellen did not say whether he planned to entrust the ultra politician with the corresponding negotiations, limiting himself to insisting that the future Executive must have “a solid majority, of more than 50% (of the seats) in Parliament.”

A failed sanitary cordon for the ultras

Furthermore, after being “surprised” and “disappointed” by the failure of the attempt to form a Government, the president promised that he will continue to ensure respect for “the fundamental pillars of democracy and the rule of law”, including the separation of powers and freedom of the press, as well as the European orientation of the republic.

Although the law leaves the head of state free to choose whoever is in charge of forming a government, the traditional practice until now has been to give the mandate to the leader of the party with the most votes.

For not having done so from the beginning, Kickl accused Van der Bellen of ignoring the will of the voters and blamed him for the “chaos” generated by his desire to establish a cordon sanitaire to keep the FPÖ out of power.

In a statement on Saturday, he called Nehammer’s resignation “logical, but too late”, and considered that the head of the Social Democrats, Andreas Babler, should also resign.

“With Nehammer, Babler and Van der Bellen also failed. They were the architects of the alliance of the losers and now they face the rubble of their strategy to stop Kickl,” wrote the ultra politician, former Minister of the Interior.

Van der Bellen had directly given Nehammer the task of forming a new Executive, overlooking the winner, Kickl, after verifying that he did not have potential partners to lead a coalition with a solid parliamentary majority, since despite his victory he occupies 57 of the 183 seats in Parliament.

Be that as it may, Kickl is now in a comfortable position, since the only alternative to an agreement with the ÖVP that would make him head of Government would be early elections, and the polls predict a new and more pronounced victory for him, with around 35%. the votes, compared to the 28.8% he obtained in September.

Thus, the FPÖ, one of the oldest far-right parties in Europe, founded after the Second World War by former Nazi leaders and sympathizers, could head a national government for the first time, because although it has already come to power in several times, until now he has done so only as a minority partner in a coalition led by conservatives.