Austria is getting a new coalition government without the far-right election winner
VIENNA (AP) — Three parties reached a deal on Thursday to form a new centrist Austrian government, five months after a far-right party won an election but later failed in an attempt to form an administration.
The conservative Austrian People’s Party, the center-left Social Democrats and the liberal Neos agreed on a program for a coalition after what Christian Stocker, who is expected to become chancellor, called “perhaps the most difficult negotiations on a government in the history of our country.”
The country’s politicians broke a post-World War II record of 129 days to form a new government that dated to 1962.
“The challenges are historic and far-reaching,” said Stocker, the new People’s Party leader, pointing to the ongoing war in Ukraine, a creaking Austrian budget and pressure from migration.
The coalition deal calls for strict new asylum rules in the European Union country of 9 million people. It foresees setting up “return centers” to house rejected asylum-seekers and for suspending family reunions.
“Should the number of asylum applications increase, we reserve the right to impose an asylum freeze,” Stocker said.
Second time lucky
This was the second attempt by the three mainstream parties to form a new government without the far-right, anti-immigration and euroskeptic Freedom Party, which in Austria’s Sept. 29 election emerged for the first time as the strongest political force. It took 28.8% of the vote.
Their first effort collapsed in early January, prompting the resignation of conservative then-Chancellor Karl Nehammer — and setting the scene for Austria’s president to ask Freedom Party leader Herbert Kickl to try to form a government.
Kickl’s own attempt to put together a coalition with the People’s Party, which finished second in the election, collapsed in mutual recriminations on Feb. 12. The mainstream parties, which faced the risk of a new election that was unlikely to do them any favors, resumed their effort to find common ground.
An unexpected new leader
Stocker, 64, is heading for the chancellery as one of the most unlikely politicians yet to become the country’s leader — a position he wasn’t running for when Austrians voted in September.
He spent much of his more than three decades in politics as a local politician in Lower Austria province before entering the national parliament in 2019. The highest elected office he has held so far was that of deputy mayor of Wiener Neustadt, south of Vienna. But he became an experienced crisis manager as the general secretary of the People’s Party, a position he took in 2022.
Stocker was known for his harsh criticism of Kickl before becoming party leader in the wake of Nehammer’s abrupt resignation. But he then made an about-turn and entered coalition talks with Kickl, under whom his party had previously refused to work.
Why is this a three-party government?
The outgoing government, a coalition of the People’s Party and environmentalist Greens now led by interim Chancellor Alexander Schallenberg, has remained in place on a caretaker basis since the election.
The People’s Party and Social Democrats often governed Austria together in the past but have the barest possible majority in the parliament elected in September, with a combined 92 of the 183 seats.
That was widely considered too small a cushion, and the two parties sought to bring in Neos, which has 18 seats and hasn’t previously joined a national government.
The deal still needs formal approval by the leadership of the two bigger parties and a two-thirds majority of Neos members, at a convention expected on Sunday.
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Geir Moulson in Berlin contributed to this report.
By STEPHANIE LIECHTENSTEIN
Associated Press
