Austrian coalition talks collapse, increasing the prospects of the far-right Freedom Party

Austria’s far-right Freedom Party got a realistic chance this weekend to lead the country’s next government, after talks between three main parties collapsed.

The rise of the Freedom Party would put its controversial leader, Herbert Kickl, in the position of chancellor and mark a new high mark for the rise of the far right in Europe.

Austrian President Alexander van der Bellen was expected to task Mr. Kickl, whose party won the largest number of seats in the National Assembly in September’s elections, with the task of forming a coalition when the two men meet on Monday. The meeting could be the first official step on the path that eventually leads to the formation of a new government.

Mr. Kickl, whose party was founded in the 1950s by former members of the SS, the Nazi paramilitary police, campaigned on a strong anti-immigrant platform. The party has a history of denigrating immigrants in Austria, describing them as criminals and welfare sponges.

He called for a temporary moratorium on accepting new asylum seekers and the enactment of a law prohibiting asylum seekers from becoming Austrian citizens. Mr. Kickl has promised to make Austria a fortress, and his party introduced him by using the word “Volkskanzer” before campaign speeches, evoking the rise of German fascism.

A senior leader of the conservative Austrian People’s Party, known by its Austrian initials ÖVP, announced on Sunday that he would be open to entering into coalition talks with the Freedom Party, despite his campaign promise that the ÖVP would not form a coalition with the party. As long as Mr. Kickle ran it.

Karl Nehammer, Austria’s chancellor, announced on Saturday that he will resign from the chancellorship and party leadership.

These developments alarmed observers of Austrian politics.

“The picture we now present to the world is, of course, not just a shift to the right, but also instability – some people even call it chaos,” said Peter Felzmeier, a political scientist at the Universities of Graz and Krems.

Twenty-nine percent of Austrians voted for the Freedom Party. The ÖVP party, which has led the Austrian government since 2017, received 26 percent. Until the end of this week, it appeared that the Freedom Party would remain out of government because all other parties refused to join a coalition with it.

Christian Stocker, who was hastily appointed to replace Mr. Nehammer as ÖVP party leader on Sunday, said in a statement to the media that he expected President Van der Bellen to ask Mr. Kickl to begin coalition talks. Mr Stoker also said: “If we are invited to talks, we will accept this invitation.”

It may take several weeks, perhaps months, before a government headed by Kickl is installed. It will be among the first openly far-right governments in Europe, reflecting the extent to which voters are dissatisfied with immigration and economic turmoil and are increasingly turning to the far right.

Last year in France, for example, the far-right National Rally party won nearly a third of the vote in the European Union parliamentary elections. In late 2023, Dutch voters gave the far-right, anti-Islam Freedom Party led by Geert Wilders a major victory in the European Union parliamentary elections. The ballot boxes, leading to the formation of a new government four months later.

The Freedom Party is currently part of five state governments and was the junior coalition partner with the ÖVP in the national government until it fell due to a salacious scandal involving a video of a fake Russian heiress and a party leader.

Before that, Mr. Kickl was the country’s Minister of the Interior, responsible for public safety and immigration, among other things.

Now that coalition talks between the conservatives and progressives have ended, coalition talks between the Freedom Party and the Austrian People’s Party may go more smoothly, political analysts in Vienna say, noting that the parties have a lot in common on many fronts.

The ÖVP’s commitment last summer not to work with the Freedom Party had more to do with the strategy of trying to remain the largest party in the coalition and retain the chancellorship, said Lorenz Enser-Gedenastic, a professor of political science at the University of Vienna.

“All barriers are now being removed very quickly – which also shows how superficial this exclusion strategy is,” he said.