Austrian President Alexander Van der Bellen is meeting the leaders of political parties on Monday and Tuesday, October 7th and 8th, to determine whom to assign the task of forming a government following the national elections a week ago.
Although the right-wing anti-immigration Freedom Party of Austria (FPÖ) clearly won the elections, receiving 28.8% of the votes and winning 57 seats in the 183-seat parliament, it is not a certainty that Van der Bellen will ask the party to try and form a coalition, which it requires to have a majority.
The former Green party politician Van der Bellen does not want the FPÖ to govern, and would rather ignore the will of the voters, as well as the practice of assigning the party with the most votes to form a cabinet.
After meeting the president on Friday, FPÖ leader Herbert Kickl said he had informed Van der Bellen that the FPÖ would like to lead the next government with Kickl as Chancellor. “The will of the voters is clear and unmistakable, and cannot be ignored and downplayed. A coalition of losers would be a slap in the face of the voters,” he said, adding that his party’s hand is outstretched to the four others in parliament.
However, none of them want to enter into a coalition with the FPÖ. The leader of the second-placed centre-right People’s Party (ÖVP), Chancellor Karl Nehammer said he rejects cooperating with Kickl, but not necessarily his party.
According to Austrian media reports, ÖVP will hold informal talks of a possible coalition with the Social Democrats in a bid to revive the grand coalition that dominated Austrian politics for many decades following the end of World War II. The two parties would have a razor-thin majority, 92 seats in the 183-seat parliament.
While the Freedom Party won its first-ever national election with its best result to date, the ÖVP lost ten percentage points, and the SPÖ achieved its worst-ever result, demonstrating that voters are dissatisfied with the current status quo, and want tougher rules on asylum and a new government to deal with the cost-of-living crisis.
A poll published on Friday reveals that a right-wing collaboration between the FPÖ and ÖVP would be the preferred coalition for most Austrians (29%). Second in line would be a government consisting of the People’s Party, the Social Democrats, and the liberal NEOS (23%).
Thirty-three percent of ÖVP voters would like their party to govern with FPÖ, while 37% would prefer a coalition with the left and the liberals. However, only 17% want a return to the grand coalition.
The next test for the Austrian political parties is already on the horizon, as voters in the western state of Vorarlberg go to the polls on Sunday. The support of the governing ÖVP is projected to drop from 43.5% to 31%, while the FPÖ is on course to double its vote share from 13.9% to 28%.
