Austrian far right close to power with conservative support

Jonathan Tirone and Marton Eder, Bloomberg News on Jan 5, 2025

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Austria’s nationalist Freedom Party crept closer to power on Sunday after receiving an invitation by the nation’s president to discuss leading a government.

Freedom Party leader Herbert Kickl will meet Austrian President Alexander Van der Bellen on Monday in Vienna after efforts to form a centrist coalition collapsed, prompting conservative Chancellor Karl Nehammer to resign.

The newly named interim leader of the People’s Party, Christian Stocker, said on Sunday that he had his group’s approval to negotiate toward a coalition led by the Freedom Party, which won more seats than any other party in September’s federal election.

“The picture has emerged that the voices within the People’s Party that rule out a collaboration with a Freedom Party led by Herbert Kickl have significantly moderated,” Van der Bellen said in a televised statement. He plans to name an interim chancellor in the next week.

The developments suggest a government led by Kickl is now the most likely outcome. A former interior minister, Kickl, 56, would be the first Freedom Party chancellor in Austria’s post-World War history.

Despite the right-wing party’s electoral win, Van der Bellen had decided not to hand Kickl a mandate to form a government, as no other parties had been ready to support his candidacy.

Instead, the president sought to facilitate a centrist coalition including the conservatives, the Social Democrats and the liberal NEOS. Those talks fell apart on Friday amid intractable differences over policy priorities.

A Freedom Party-led government would bring a pro-Russian, anti-immigrant and climate-skeptic group into power in the Central European nation. Kickl also harshly opposed a coronavirus vaccine mandate during the pandemic, and supported far-right activists promoting the mass deportation of immigrants.

“Since yesterday, the situation looks different,” Stocker said on Sunday. “It is therefore not about Herbert Kickl or me, but about the fact that this country needs a stable government right now and we cannot keep losing time in election campaigns.”

A new government will face the task of reviving an economy in crisis, with years of rapid wage growth and surging energy costs eroding the nation’s competitiveness. Austria will also need to approve billions of euros in budget consolidating measures to avoid European Union penalties.

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