Karl Nehammer, Austrian Chancellor, announced this Saturday, January 4, his upcoming resignation after the failure of coalition negotiations aimed at forming a centrist government.
Faced with the failure of negotiations with the Social Democrats to try to form the next government, conservative Austrian Chancellor Karl Nehammer made an unexpected decision. This Saturday, June 4, he announced that he would leave his functions as well as the presidency of his party “in the coming days”.
In a message posted on X, he explained that his departure must allow “an orderly transition”. This decision could lead to early elections or force the conservatives to negotiate with the far right, which came first in the legislative elections on September 29.
The Austrian Freedom Party (FPÖ, far right) won 28.8% of the vote, but subsequently failed to find allies to form a government. Tripartite coalition negotiations then began between the Austrian People’s Party (ÖVP, conservatives), the Social Democratic Party of Austria (SPÖ, center-left) and the liberal Neos Party, in order to form a centrist government.
Neos, however, withdrew from the discussions on Friday, ending the exchanges. The two remaining parties had initially expressed their intention to continue the work but, this Saturday, Karl Nehammer definitively closed the negotiations, considering that an “agreement with the SPÖ is impossible on key issues”.
Claiming to have “always fought for stability”, he regretted not having been able to create a “force of political centrism in order to build a bulwark against the radicals”. “I have the deep conviction that the radicals do not offer the solution to a single problem, but only live to highlight the problems,” added the resigning chancellor.
Coalition discussions began in October and, from the start, Karl Nehammer warned that they were going to be difficult. A coalition of three parties to form a government would have been a first since 1949 in Austria, where the economy is losing momentum while the public deficit is soaring.
