Austria: Far-right faces rocky road to coalition

Austria's Freedom Party (FPÖ) announced on Monday that it had formed a team to handle upcoming coalition negotiations after securing the most votes in parliamentary elections the day before.

With 29.2% of the votes, Sunday's election marked the first time a far-right party had won the most support in Austria since World War II. The Freedom Party gained 27 seats, and will hold 58 out of 183 seats in parliament.

"Tomorrow there will be a blue Monday and then we will set about turning that 29% into a political reality in this country," FPÖ leader Herbert Kickl said as the results came in.

This might have been a twin play on words: a "blue Monday" is a German phrase for a Monday that is not a working day, perhaps indicating his politicians had some sleep to catch up on after election day, and blue is also the color associated with Kickl's Russia-friendly, euroskeptic party.

However, Kickl's path to the chancellery is far from certain. Although the center-right Austrian People's Party (ÖVP) has ruled in coalition with the FPÖ twice in the past, incumbent Chancellor Karl Nehammer ruled out the possibility of it happening again. 

More specifically, Nehammer said he would not work with Kickl. A former minister of the interior under disgraced former Chancellor Sebastian Kurz, Kickl has moved even further to the right since he resigned in 2019. On top of his already extreme anti-immigration rhetoric, he criticized the use of vaccines to stop the spread of COVID-19 and has sought close relations with Russian President Vladimir Putin following the invasion of Ukraine.

Kickl calls on Nehammer to resign

Kickl said that the election results, which saw heavy losses for the ÖVP and its coalition partner the Greens, herald a "new era" and called on Nehammer to resign.

"When one suffers such a historic defeat, there can be only one outcome," Kickl was quoted by news agency APA as saying.

Further complicating Kickl's ambitions is the role of Austrian President Alexander Van der Bellen. A former Green party leader, part of the president's role is to oversee coalition negotiations. According to local media, Van der Bellen has signalled that he expects upcoming coalition talks to be drawn-out.

Heavy losses for governing coalition

The ÖVP garnered about 26.5% of the vote, a loss of eleven points since the last election in 2019. The center-left Social Democrats (SPÖ) stayed about the same as four years earlier at 21% and the centrist NEOS party came in fourth at 9%. The Greens lost 11 seats in parliament and only managed about 8% of the vote, coming in last of all the major parties.

Without the FPÖ, Austria will face the prospect of either a three-party coalition or a minority government. Although Austria has had a minority government once in its postwar history, it is considered something of a taboo.

The FPÖ result is the latest in a series of strong performances for far-right parties in recent months, including at parliamentary elections in the Netherlands and France earlier this year, and in three state elections in eastern Germany this month.

es/msh (AFP, dpa)