The acting Chancellor of Austria, the conservative Karl Nehammer, announced this Saturday that he will resign in the coming days as head of the Government and of his party, the ÖVP, after failing the negotiations that he has led in recent weeks to form a new Executive. to avoid the extreme right. The Freedom Party (FPÖ) won the parliamentary elections on September 29 with 28.8% of the votes, far from the majority. The rest of the parties refused to start talks with their leader. However, the rest of the parties have not been able since then to agree on a coalition that would add a majority in Parliament. “I will resign as chancellor and as leader of the ÖVP in the coming days and facilitate an orderly transition,” Nehammer said in a video on his X account late in the afternoon, in which he also announced the end of the negotiations.
The president of the country, the progressive Alexander Van der Bellen, avoided entrusting the formation of the Government to Kickl and after conversations with all the leaders finally asked the Christian Democrat chancellor to try it. The ÖVP fell at the polls to second position with 26.3% of the votes, close to the Social Democrats, with 21.1%. Both traditional parties have marked Austrian politics for decades and have been allies in many Executives, but on this occasion they started from very distant positions to agree on a common program. Furthermore, with their votes they only have a bare majority of one seat in Parliament.
Therefore, the talks finally included the Neos liberals, who received 9.1% of the votes. Weeks of talks came to an abrupt end on Friday, when liberals threw in the towel and argued that conservatives and Social Democrats are not open to a reform program they say is necessary to lift Austria out of recession. In a last attempt to avoid a total failure, Nehammer and his team, and the leader of the Socialist ranks, Andreas Babler, and his team, have tried in vain this Saturday to reach an agreement.
