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Austria's conservatives want far right to be given chance to form coalition

Having secured around 29% of the vote, the FPO would need a coalition partner to secure a majority of seats in parliament and govern

Published: Tue 1 Oct 2024, 4:03 PM

Updated: Tue 1 Oct 2024, 4:55 PM

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  • Reuters

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Austrian Chancellor and head of Peoples Party (OeVP) Karl Nehammer arrives to give a press statement after the general elections, in Vienna, Austria, on Tuesday. REUTERS

Austrian Chancellor and head of Peoples Party (OeVP) Karl Nehammer arrives to give a press statement after the general elections, in Vienna, Austria, on Tuesday. REUTERS

The leader of Austria's conservatives, Chancellor Karl Nehammer, urged President Alexander Van der Bellen on Tuesday to formally task the far-right Freedom Party (FPO) with forming a coalition after it won Sunday's parliamentary election.

The Russia-friendly, anti-immigration FPO's victory was a historic first for the party formed in the 1950s whose first leader had been a senior SS officer and Nazi lawmaker.

Having secured around 29% of the vote, the FPO would need a coalition partner to secure a majority of seats in parliament and govern. The other parties have said they are not interested.

"In my view it is a good tradition that the winner of the election is tasked with holding sounding-out talks (with other parties)," Nehammer told reporters after a meeting of the OVP leadership unanimously reaffirmed him as party leader.

The OVP came second in Sunday's election, around 2-1/2 percentage points behind the FPO. If it allied with the third-placed Social Democrats they would have a majority of just one seat, which is widely seen as too narrow a margin to be viable.

That means a three-way tie-up with a smaller party like the liberal Neos would be a more likely option.

Van der Bellen, a former leader of the Greens and FPO critic who oversees the formation of governments, said on Sunday he would hold meetings with the parties in parliament and called on them to talk to each other, leaving open what would happen next.

"It is now up to the president to say how he envisions the next steps in the process," Nehammer said.



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