VIENNA (Reuters) -Austria was heading towards coalition talks led by the far-right Freedom Party (FPÖ) on Sunday, after attempts to form a centrist government without it failed and forced Chancellor Karl Nehammer to resignation.
Karl Nehammer, who announced his resignation on Saturday evening, had led negotiations with three parties, then two, to try to forge a centrist coalition capable of serving as a bulwark for the eurosceptic FPÖ and close to Russia.
The FPÖ came first in the September parliamentary elections with around 29% of the vote.
The outgoing chancellor’s conservative party, the People’s Party (OVP), appointed its general secretary Christian Stocker as its new interim leader on Sunday.
Christian Stocker has repeatedly repeated Karl Nehammer’s position that the OVP would not govern with FPÖ leader Herbert Kickl, but he said on Sunday that things have now changed.
Following the failure of negotiations to form a coalition government without the participation of the FPÖ, Austrian President Alexander Van der Bellen announced that he would meet the leader of the FPÖ on Monday.
“The voices within the People’s Party ruling out any cooperation with an FPÖ led by Herbert Kickl are much less heard. This means that a new path could open up, which did not exist before,” he said in a speech to the nation.
The Austrian chancellor’s failure to form a coalition illustrates the growing difficulties for centrist parties in many European countries to form stable governments without an increasingly influential far right.
The FPÖ has been a minority member in government coalitions in Austria before, most recently with the OVP from 2017 to 2019, but has never been in a position to lead one since its creation in the 1950s by a former SS officer and Nazi politician.
(Reporting by François MurphyFrench version Elizabeth Pineau and Gilles Guillaume)
