Austria’s President Alexander Van der Bellen‘s decision to charge Chancellor Karl Nehammer, the conservative People’s Party leader, with forming the country’s new government has provoked an outcry from the far-right Freedom Party (FPÖ), which topped the polls in last month’s general election. The EU-averse, Moscow-sympathetic FPÖ’s 29% of the vote, its best ever performance, left it well short of the margin needed to form a government on its own. FPÖ leader Herbert Kikl‘s hopes to become the new chancellor seem to have been similarly sidelined as other parties ruled out joining an FPÖ-led coalition.
President Van der Bellen stated the reasons for his decision in a televised address, noting that last month’s parliamentary election was not “a race in which the party that crosses the finish line first automatically gets to form the government.” In order to govern alone, a party “must clear the 50% hurdle“, he added.
A former leader of the left-wing Greens, Van der Bellen, whose reservations about Kickl entering government on his watch were known, maintained he was not required to ask the election winner to form a ruling coalition when, unprecedentedly, no other party wanted to govern with it.
Having instructed the party leaders to meet and report back to him, Van der Bellen then tasked Nehammer with holding coalition talks with the Social Democrats (SPÖ).
An outraged Kickl warned against forming what he called a “coalition of losers” on the basis of “excluding” FPÖ. He insisted that it would be undemocratic were his party not to govern. Telling his supporters on Facebook that this was tantamount to “a slap in the face”, he promised that “the final word has not yet been spoken.” Saying he would await the result of the current coalition talks, he noted that his offer of a coalition partnership to others remained on the cards.
Chancellor Nehammer, the Conservative Party (ÖVP) leader, meanwhile made clear that if a newly formed coalition was to enjoy a stable parliamentary majority it would have to include a third partner in addition to the ÖVP and SPÖ parties which had finished second and third in the elections. His vow to introduce reforms and that there would be “no more business as usual” suggests he is leaning towards the liberal Neos rather than the Greens, his current coalition partner.
A three-way governing coalition would be Austria’s first since independence in 1955.