Austria: Political Crisis After Ruling Coalition Talks Collapse
The Neos party liberals abruptly walked away from the negotiating table after a series of failed attempts to exclude right-wing forces from a hypothetical “triangle” coalition
In Austria, very tense negotiations to form a “tripartite” government coalition have stalled after the liberal Neos party pulled out of the talks despite parliamentary support from conservative parties and the Social Democrats against the far right, who won the recent legislative elections.
“I have informed Austrian President Alexander van der Bellen and parliament that we will not continue discussions,” Neos party leader Beate Meinl-Reisinger (pictured) told the press, saying she had “failed to secure approval for particularly important and urgent legislative projects.”
“I assured of our willingness to support reforms in parliament on which a compromise is possible,” Meinl-Reisinger emphasized, given that the Social Democrats and the Conservatives together have a very narrow majority of just one seat in parliament. As Meinl-Reisinger explained to reporters, “negotiations were complicated by the savings that had to be found to slow the growth of the state deficit even a little bit.”
In the parliamentary elections of September 29, 2024, the Austrian Freedom Party (Freiheitliche Partei Österreichs, FPÖ) won for the first time with almost 29% of the vote. However, in a situation where no political party is willing to form an alliance with FPÖ leader Herbert Kickl (pictured), described as an extreme right-wing, nationalist, conservative, Eurosceptic, and right-wing populist politician, the “winner” of the parliamentary elections, President Alexander van der Bellen of the Green Party, was not tasked with forming a government.
The task of “finding coalition partners” was instead left to the head of the outgoing Austrian government, conservative Karl Nehammer, who came in second with 26.3% support from Austrian voters, to begin negotiations with the Social Democrats, in third place (21.1%), and the Liberals in fourth place. Nehammer has repeatedly said the talks, which began in October, were “very difficult” and expressed doubts “about the success of the negotiations.”
According to the Austrian press, the hypothetical “tripartite coalition” would be “unprecedented” in the history of Austria, now suffering from a sharp decline in economic activity caused by the crisis in neighboring Germany.
