Austrian president asks anti-migration, pro-Kremlin FPÖ to begin negotiations with conservative ÖVP
Austria’s president has tasked the anti-migration, pro-Kremlin Freedom party (FPÖ) with holding talks to form a ruling coalition, potentially paving the way for the far right to lead the government for the first time since the second world war.
After meeting the FPÖ leader, Herbert Kickl, at the Hofburg palace in Vienna, Alexander van der Bellen said the party, which narrowly won the most votes in September’s general election, could begin negotiations with the conservative Austrian People’s party (ÖVP) on forming a governing alliance.
“I didn’t take this decision lightly,” said the president, who under the constitution formally names the chancellor. “I will continue to make sure that the principles and rules of our constitution are respected and upheld.”
Months-long negotiations by mainstream parties to form a coalition to block the far right collapsed at the weekend because of differences on how to revive the ailing Austrian economy and manage public finances.
The chancellor, Karl Nehammer of the ÖVP, announced his intention to resign on Saturday after the talks broke down. He had repeatedly ruled out becoming junior partner to the FPÖ with Kickl as the head of government. Some commentators said the U-turn by Nehammer’s party bordered on voter fraud.
The ÖVP said on Sunday it had nominated its general secretary, Christian Stocker, to act as interim leader. Stocker has expressed his willingness to negotiate with the FPÖ and has received his party’s blessing to do so.
The failure of the centrist parties to build an effective “firewall” against the FPÖ means Austria could soon join a growing bloc of EU countries led by the far right, including Italy, the Netherlands, Slovakia and Hungary.
It also underlined the dilemma faced by democratic forces across Europe in fighting a rising tide of extremism as anti-immigration, Eurosceptic parties splinter the vote.
Germany’s unwieldy centre-left-led coalition under the chancellor, Olaf Scholz, collapsed in November. The anti-Islam, far-right Alternative für Deutschland party is polling on 19%, second behind the opposition conservatives, ahead of a snap election next month.
The German vice-chancellor, Robert Habeck of the Greens, said developments in Austria should serve as a warning.
“If the centrist parties aren’t capable of forming coalitions and dismiss compromises as the devil’s work, it only helps the radicals,” he told the public broadcaster Deutschlandfunk.
If the coalition negotiations in Vienna between the FPÖ and the ÖVP fail, Austria will have to hold a new election.
Kickl, a firebrand whose speeches during the run-up to the September election were peppered with Nazi-era slogans, has long been denounced by centrist leaders as a conspiracy theorist and security risk.
A protege of the late FPÖ chief Jörg Haider, Kickl cites Hungary’s autocratic prime minister, Viktor Orbán, as a role model and campaigned on lifting sanctions imposed against Russia after the invasion of Ukraine.
Hundreds of anti-FPÖ protesters including Austrian Jewish leaders held a rally outside the Hofburg during the hour-long talks between Kickl and the president, chanting: “Van der Bellen, throw him out!”
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Kickl did not speak as he left the meeting, but writing on Instagram on Sunday he said he deplored the “lost time” since the election and the “enormous loss of trust” in the political class. He said the FPÖ would stand for “honesty, clarity, predictability, stability and credibility” in government.
Julia Partheymüller, a political scientist at the Vienna Centre for Electoral Research, said Kickl would be a “polarising figure” as chancellor, noting that a previous stint as interior minister had been marked by “a tense relationship with the liberal state governed by the rule of law and a confrontational approach to media”.
The FPÖ’s historic 29% of the vote last September came amid a wave of voter anger over immigration and inflation, issues driving the hard right’s surge against incumbents in many western democracies. Polls suggest support for the FPÖ has grown since the election.
It marked a remarkable comeback for a party humiliated in the so-called Ibiza scandal, in which Austria’s then deputy chancellor and FPÖ leader, Heinz-Christian Strache, was caught on video at a Spanish luxury resort discussing a potential bribe from a woman purporting to be the niece of a Russian oligarch.
Partheymüller said the impact of the FPÖ leading the government would be felt far beyond Austria, which despite having a population of 9 million people has outsize influence in the EU owing to its strong alliances and role as a geographical crossroads.
Kickl has railed against immigrants with slogans such as “Fortress Austria” and “Austria First” and stoked controversy by campaigning on a slogan to become “Volkskanzler” (people’s chancellor), a moniker once used for Adolf Hitler.
The FPÖ was founded in the 1950s and first led by a former senior SS officer and Nazi lawmaker. The party has played the junior partner to the ÖVP in several governments and rules with the conservatives in five of Austria’s nine states. Security services consider some factions of the FPÖ to be extremist.
The ÖVP has adopted the FPÖ’s hard line on immigration, which nevertheless failed to prevent a double-digit slide in its share of the vote in the September election compared with the last poll in 2019.
