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The new leader of the center-right Austrian People’s Party (ÖVP) has signaled his desire to share power with the far right, just a day after Chancellor Karl Nehammer resigned after failing to form a centrist government coalition.
Christian Stocker, general secretary of the ÖVP, said on Sunday that he had been appointed party leader and was ready to start negotiations with the anti-immigration and pro-Russian Freedom Party (FPÖ). , which won the most seats in the Austrian parliamentary elections. national elections in September.
Stocker’s statement comes after Austrian President Alexander Van der Bellen announced he would meet FPÖ leader Herbert Kickl on Monday. Observers expect Van der Bellen to ask Kickl to form a coalition government, as centrist parties have previously ruled out such an alliance.
“If we are invited [by the FPÖ to hold coalition talks]we will seriously conduct these discussions as we have done in the past with other parties,” Stocker said, stressing that his party “will take responsibility.”
The ÖVP would be the junior partner in any tie-up with the far-right Freedom party, which won 28.8 percent of the vote in September’s elections, compared to 26.3 percent for the ÖVP.
It was the first time that the FPÖ, which has taken an increasingly hard line on immigration and the war in Ukraine under Kickl in recent years, came out on top in a national election.
The failure of the negotiations has worsened political stagnation in Austria at a time when its economy risks contracting for a third consecutive year in 2025. Vienna also faces the prospect of finding between 18 and 24 billion euros in budget cuts to restore its public finances. according to figures from the European Commission.
One possibility to break the deadlock would be new elections, but this could further strengthen the FPÖ’s position. A poll by the tabloid Kronen Zeitung after Nehammer’s resignation suggested that the FPÖ would reach 37 percent in an early vote, while the ÖVP would drop to 21 percent.
Van der Bellen last year tasked Nehammer, then ÖVP leader and chancellor, with forming a government. Nehammer, who had categorically ruled out any cooperation with Kickl, resigned on Saturday evening after admitting that the long negotiations with the Social Democrats had hit a wall.
The 52-year-old, who had been chancellor since 2021, when his predecessor Sebastian Kurz resigned following a corruption investigation, had sought to strike a deal to form a centrist coalition with the Social Democrats and the smaller party Liberal Neos.
In a brief statement to journalists in Vienna on Sunday, the new ÖVP boss-designate, Stocker, admitted that he had also been very critical of the far-right FPÖ during the campaign. But he stressed that circumstances have changed and all attempts to form a government without the FPÖ have failed.
