The far-right Freedom Party's historic victory in an Austrian parliamentary election has left it isolated and partly at the mercy of a powerful critic: the president, who must oversee efforts towards forming a viable coalition government.
The Eurosceptic, Russia-friendly Freedom Party (FPO) won for the first time, but its 29% vote share fell well short of a parliamentary majority. It needs a coalition partner to govern, and other parties' leaders say they are not interested.
President Alexander Van der Bellen, 80, a former leader of the left-wing Greens, voiced reservations about the FPO last year due to its failure to condemn Russia's invasion of Ukraine and the party's opposition to sanctions against Moscow.
He also hinted he might not allow the FPO's 55-year-old leader Herbert Kickl to become chancellor. Kickl has urged Van der Bellen to follow established practice and ask the first-placed party to try to form a government. Van der Bellen says he has no such obligation, and constitutional experts agree.
In an address on Sunday evening in which he asked parties to sound each other out, Van der Bellen said "the pillars of our liberal democracy" should be respected, citing the rule of law, rights of minorities, independent media and EU membership.
Those are points that Kickl's opponents say he and the FPO have been working to undermine. Kickl says his party is the sole true defender of Austrian sovereignty and neutrality.
"Of course that was a signal, but it could have two different meanings," Kathrin Stainer-Haemmerle, political science professor at the Carinthia University of Applied Sciences, said of Van der Bellen's remarks.
"On the one hand, that the Freedom Party must not be allowed to govern. I don't think he wanted to go quite that far....But of course it could also mean, 'There are some things that I want to be included in the (future) government programme'."
Van der Bellen's office did not immediately reply to a request for comment on his remarks, which also suggested that the process of forming a coalition could take even longer than the two or three months Austrians are used to.
Hours after the 2019 election which the ruling conservatives won by a significantly larger margin, Van der Bellen said he would "naturally" ask the first-placed party to try and build a coalition. He did so eight days later.
This time, he gave no such guidance, and said that a party with no majority "must convince others - other potential government partners, as well as the president", if it wants to form a government, highlighting his central role.
On Sunday, Kickl said that Van der Bellen had to take into account that the FPO came first.
"This constitution isn't something based on the principle of arbitrariness, but on the balance of power," he said.
If Kickl cannot find a partner to work with, it could open the door to a coalition of more moderate parties.
Founded in the 1950s under the helm of an ex-Nazi lawmaker, the FPO has worked to moderate its image. As with the rising far right in some other EU countries, voters were drawn by FPO vows to restrict immigration and tackle cost-of-living crises.
© Thomson Reuters 2024.
20 Comments
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Banthu
Every day that the pointless war in Ukraine drags on with people dying needlessly on both sides and massive economic and social ramifications disrupting Europe, the "Russia-friendly" sentiment grows in Europe.
At this rate, Putin will capture all of Europe by the ballot box by 2025.
The Ripper!
Excellent progress for Austria.
bass4funk
Seems like good times ahead for that country.
Fighto!
71% of Austrian electors did NOT vote for the FPO. There is almost no chance they will be able to cobble a government together with like-minded allies. Not many places on earth where a party with a 29% vote can practically and legitimatey form government.
I'd love to know how much fascist Russia is funding this FPO, by the way.
Fighto!
That's a very important fact to know.
A lot of people nowadays - and we see it endlessly in these threads - whitewash the Nazis. "But. ..they did some good things!" ... "It turns out they were correct after all!"
No, they weren't.
Blacklabel
Didn’t they get the most votes? Not how it works, just this time?
wallace
Austria like Hungary is a small insignificant country with very small populations and little power. They relied on EU funds to prop them up.
Fighto!
Its never how it works. Power doesn't just magically go to the party with most votes. The likelihood of populist parties forming a government in a parliamentary system with 29% of the vote is slim to remote at best.
Centrist parties, i.e., those supported by most, almost always form governing coalitions.
You'll need to do a little research on how the Parliamentary system works (I accept you are probably not from such a nation).
burgers and beers
A lot of people nowadays - and we see it endlessly in these threads - whitewash the Nazis. "But. ..they did some good things!" ... "It turns out they were correct after all!" No, they weren't.
Fair point. Btw, you are aware of how LDP came around to being and who many of its members were right?
Fighto!
You do realise Japan has had a pacifist constitution for almost 80 years, right? Japan does not run around supporting wars of aggression, as the Austrian neo-Nazi FPO are.
The FPO will not be forming any government. The Conservatives have outright blocked it, and I cannot see the FPO forming an alliance with the Greens or Social Democrats.
starpunk
It must also be remembered that Austria itself had a Nazi government before WW2 created by traitors within (pseudo-trump). And finally in 1938, Austria was in Anschluss with Nazi Germany.
burgers and beers
Austria like Hungary is a small insignificant country with very small populations and little power.
Austria is small but one of the nicest places in Europe.
burgers and beers
You do realise Japan has had a pacifist constitution for almost 80 years, right? Japan does not run around supporting wars of aggression,
Neither does Austria.
Fighto!
Exactly - and that's how it will remain, since the Russian invasion-supporting FPO will not be able to form a government. Thankfully.
wallace
burgers and beers
Austria like Hungary is a small insignificant country with very small populations and little power.
I was talking politically not geographically.
TaiwanIsNotChina
Do you think you will get greater than 10% in the next European parliament?
Lord Dartmouth
Keir Starmer got a lower vote share than Marie Le Pen. Geert Wilders blocked from power, despite winning most seats. Now this. Ever get a feeling things are being manipulated to ensure real conservatives never get power? If they keep on doing this, frustration will only build and make the final victory of the right even more inevitable.
Fighto!
@ Lord Dartmouth - in parliamentary democracies, a party needs to gain half the seats in the house, plus one, in order to form government. Or be able to form a coalition to do that. The FPO won just 57 seats in a house of 183. Almost certainly unable to form a coalition - even the centre-right OVP will not entertain this.
You cannot govern with those numbers, simple as that. No conspiracy, that's the long-standing rules of the electoral system.
You are comparing apples with oranges. Starmers' party - Labour - won more than enough seats to govern in their own right. 403/650. That is the difference.
Deluded Brian
Austria ia a powerful European country in which the people have spoken out powerfully.
Lord Dartmouth
Fighto, I understand very well how parliamentary democracies work. The problem is that the centre and left and greens make absurd and unnatural alliances, as in France at the moment, designed SOLELY to keep the right out of power, and with no view to governing effectively in the interest of the people. They have lied for so long about the dangers of the right and made such a bogeyman of Le Pen/Wilders/Orban/Farage/AfD, etc. etc., that they now seem to actually believe their own tired propaganda. Macron mad a pact with the crazies of the left, such as Melenchon, who, if he gets his way, will utterly bankrupt France, but the French establishment persists in smearing the RN as THE existential danger facing the Republic. Le Pen in power will govern roughly as Meloni is governing in Italy. The globalist media tried to persuade us that she was a fascist, but gave up when it was obvious that no concentration camps were being opened there.