VIENNA: Austria headed on Sunday toward coalition talks led by the far-right Freedom Party (FPO) after efforts to form a government without the party fell apart and prompted Chancellor Karl Nehammer to resign. Nehammer, who announced he was quitting late on Saturday, had led three- and then two-party talks aimed at forging a centrist coalition that could serve as a bulwark against the FPO after the euroskeptic, Russia-friendly party came first in September’s parliamentary election.

Nehammer’s conservative People’s Party (OVP) appointed Secretary-General Christian Stocker on Sunday as its new leader in an interim capacity. Stocker had long repeated Nehammer’s position that the OVP would not govern 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 tasked with forming a future government. If we are invited to these (coalition) talks, we will accept this invitation,” Stocker told reporters. “It is therefore not about Herbert Kickl or me, but about the fact that this country needs a stable government right now and that we cannot keep losing time in election campaigns or elections,” he said.

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

While saying the situation had now changed, Van der Bellen stopped short of saying he would ask Kickl to lead coalition talks. He is due to meet Kickl at 11 am (1000 GMT) on Monday and a new caretaker chancellor will also be appointed in the coming week, with Nehammer staying in office until then.

“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 be opening 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 secure a parliamentary majority and lead a government for the first time since it was formed in the 1950s under a leader who had been a senior SS officer and Nazi lawmaker. The collapse of the centrist coalition talks in Austria highlights the growing difficulty for centrist parties in many European countries in forming stable governments without a far right that is gaining ground. The FPO won September’s election with about 29 percent of the vote, and opinion polls suggest its support has grown since then, extending its lead over the OVP and 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 much of Kickl’s party was trustworthy. The OVP and FPO overlap on various issues, particularly taking a tough line on immigration, to the point that the FPO has accused the OVP of stealing its ideas.

The two governed together from late 2017 until 2019, when a video-sting scandal involving the then-leader of the FPO prompted their coalition’s collapse.

The FPO hammered home its message earlier on Sunday. “Austria needs a Chancellor Kickl now,” it said on the X social media platform. — Reuters