Austrian president duties far-right chief with forming authorities

By Francois Murphy

VIENNA (Reuters) – Austrian President Alexander Van der Bellen tasked the chief of the far-right Freedom Celebration (FPO) on Monday with forming a coalition authorities after a centrist bid to assemble one with out the FPO collapsed unexpectedly over the weekend.

The announcement marks a dramatic reversal for the president, a former chief of the left-wing Greens who has lengthy been crucial of the FPO and has clashed with its chief Herbert Kickl, however few choices remained to Van der Bellen after the centrists’ failure to forge a coalition.

The eurosceptic, Russia-friendly FPO gained final September’s parliamentary election with 29% of the vote. It should now enter talks with its solely potential accomplice, the conservative Folks’s Celebration (OVP), looking for to steer a authorities for the primary time because it was based within the Nineteen Fifties beneath a pacesetter who had been a senior officer in Hitler’s elite paramilitary SS.

“I’ve… tasked him with launching talks with the Folks’s Celebration to kind a authorities,” Van der Bellen mentioned in a televised handle after assembly Kickl, including: “I didn’t take this step frivolously.”

As Kickl left his assembly with the president, lots of of protesters together with Jewish college students and left-wing activists booed, whistled, chanted “Nazis out” and waved banners with slogans resembling “We do not desire a right-wing extremist Austria”.

Van der Bellen had infuriated the FPO by not tasking it with forming a authorities quickly after the election since no potential coalition accomplice was instantly forthcoming. That job fell to the conservative Folks’s Celebration (OVP) and its chief Chancellor Karl Nehammer. The OVP got here second within the election.

Nehammer’s makes an attempt to assemble a three- after which two-party coalition with different centrist events fell aside this weekend, prompting him to announce his resignation.

OVP NOW OPEN TO TALKS

Nehammer had lengthy insisted his social gathering wouldn’t govern with Kickl, saying the FPO chief was a conspiracy theorist and safety menace. With Nehammer gone, so is that crimson line. His interim successor as OVP chief, Christian Stocker, mentioned on Sunday his social gathering would be a part of coalition talks led by Kickl.

“We’re on the very starting. If we’re invited to those talks, the result of these talks is open,” OVP heavyweight Wilfried Haslauer, the governor of Salzburg state who stood subsequent to Stocker at his first assertion to the media as designated social gathering chief, instructed broadcaster ORF.

Ought to these talks fail, nonetheless, a snap election is probably going, and opinion polls present FPO assist has solely grown since September.

The OVP and FPO overlap on varied points, notably over taking a tricky line on immigration.

The thorniest problem within the centrists’ talks, nonetheless, was how you can shrink the finances deficit, which is forecast to exceed the EU’s restrict of three% of financial output in 2024 and 2025.

Whereas each events name for tax cuts, the FPO has pledged to take a knife to a number of the OVP’s vested pursuits, such because the highly effective Chamber of Commerce. They’ve additionally clashed over the FPO’s opposition to help for Ukraine in its battle towards Russia, and present plans for a missile defence system.

Van der Bellen has repeatedly mentioned he’ll stay vigilant to make sure “cornerstones of democracy” together with human rights, unbiased media and Austria’s membership of the European Union are revered.