Written by François Murphy
VIENNA (Reuters) – The leadership of Austria's ruling conservative party held a crisis meeting on Sunday to choose a successor to Chancellor Karl Nehammer, who announced his resignation on Saturday as attempts to form a coalition government without the far right collapsed.
The sudden collapse of talks between three parties, then between the two parties, with the aim of forming a centrist coalition that could serve as a bulwark against the far-right Freedom Party after the far-right Freedom Party came first in last September's parliamentary elections, leaving President Alexander Van Belen Monastery. With few options.
A snap election with support for the pro-Russian, eurosceptic Freedom Party still growing or a shift in which Van der Bellen tasks Freedom Party leader Herbert Kickl with forming a government are the most likely options now, with only limited room for alternatives or playing for the win. . time.
“The situation is not easy,” Markus Wallner, governor of Vorarlberg, the westernmost of Austria’s nine provinces, told reporters before a People’s Party leadership meeting in the chancellor’s office.
“I believe we must do everything we can now to avoid sliding into a national crisis.”
Wallner said he opposes holding early elections because that would delay the arrival of a new government for months. OVP governors are part of the leadership.
Nehammer insisted during and after the election campaign that his party would not govern with Kickel because he was a conspiracy theorist and posed a security risk while at the same time saying that much of Kickel's party was trustworthy.
Nehammer's departure makes it likely that his successor will be more open to forming a coalition with the Freedom Party, which is officially allied with the Fidesz party led by Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban.
Increased support for FPO
The Freedom Party won the September election with about 29% of the vote, and opinion polls suggest its support has increased since then, widening its lead over the Vice President's Party and the Social Democrats to more than 10 percentage points while shrinking their support.
The Vice President's Party and the Freedom Party overlap on various issues, especially taking a hard-line stance on immigration, to the point that the Freedom Party accused the Vice President's Party of stealing its ideas.
The two governed together from late 2017 until 2019, when a video scandal involving the then leader of the Freedom Party led to the collapse of their coalition. At the state level, they govern together in five of the nine states, including the OVP Wallner's moderate state of Vorarlberg.
The national dynamic is now different because if they form a coalition the VP will for the first time be a junior partner to the Freedom Party, making the position of VP leader difficult and undesirable for many.
After initial media reports that household names such as former party leader Sebastian Kurz, who led the last coalition with the Freedom Party and has since been convicted of perjury, could become leader of the CHP, Austrian media reported overnight that they were no longer in the race. .
This left less well-known figures such as the new Secretary General of the Chamber of Commerce Wolfgang Hattmannsdorfer, 45.
Meanwhile, the Freedom Party reiterated its message.
“Austria needs Chancellor Kickl now,” she said on the X programme.
