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The incoming leader of the center-right Austrian People's Party (ÖVP) has expressed his openness to sharing power with the far-right, just a day after Chancellor Karl Nehammer resigned after failing to form a centrist ruling coalition.
Christian Stoker, secretary-general of the ÖVP, said on Sunday that he had been nominated as the party's new president and was willing to enter into negotiations with the anti-immigration, pro-Russian Freedom Party, which won the largest number of seats in the Austrian parliament. National elections in September.
Stocker's statement came after Austrian President Alexander van der Bellen announced that he would meet with Freedom Party leader Herbert Kickl on Monday. Observers expect that Van der Bellen will ask Kickl to form a coalition government, after the centrist parties had previously ruled out such an alliance.
“If we receive an invitation (from the Austrian Freedom Party for coalition talks), we will conduct these discussions seriously as we have done in the past with other parties,” Stocker said, stressing that his party “will face up to its responsibilities.”
The Austrian People's Party would be the junior partner in any tie-up with the far-right Freedom Party, which received 28.8 percent of the vote in the September election, compared to 26.3 percent for the Austrian People's Party.
It was the first time that the Austrian Freedom Party, which has adopted increasingly hard-line policies on immigration and the war in Ukraine under Kickl's leadership in recent years, came first in a national election.
The failed negotiations have deepened Austria's political stagnation at a time when its economy risks contracting for the third year in a row in 2025. Vienna also faces the prospect of finding budget cuts of between 18 billion euros and 24 billion euros to repair its public finances. According to European Commission figures.
One possibility to break any impasse is to hold new elections, but that could increase the strength of the FPÖ. An opinion poll conducted by the popular newspaper Kronen-Zeitung after Nehammer's resignation indicated that the Austrian Freedom Party would rise to 37 percent in an early vote, while the Austrian People's Party's popularity would fall to 21 percent.
Last year Van der Bellen tasked ÖVP leader and Chancellor Nehammer with forming the government. Nehammer, who had strongly ruled out any cooperation with Kickl, resigned late on Saturday after acknowledging that protracted negotiations with the Social Democrats had reached an impasse.
The 52-year-old, who has served as chancellor since 2021 when his predecessor Sebastian Kurz stepped down amid a corruption investigation, sought a deal to form a centrist coalition with the Social Democrats and the small liberal Neues party.
In a brief statement to reporters in Vienna on Sunday, the new head-designate of the ÖVP, Stocker, admitted that he had also strongly criticized the far-right FPÖ party in the campaign. But he stressed that circumstances have changed and that all attempts to form a government without the Austrian Freedom Party have failed.
