Austria to get 1st far-right government since World War II

The Freedom Party, led by Herbert Kickl, won Austria’s parliamentary election in September, beating outgoing Chancellor Karl Nehammer’s conservative Austrian People’s Party.

The leader of Austria’s Freedom Party received a mandate Monday to form a new government, which would be the first headed by the far right since World War II if he succeeds.

The Freedom Party, led by Herbert Kickl, won Austria’s parliamentary election in September, taking 28.8 per cent of the vote and beating outgoing Chancellor Karl Nehammer’s conservative Austrian People’s Party into second place.

But in October, President Alexander Van der Bellen gave Nehammer the first chance to form a new government after Nehammer’s party said it wouldn’t go into government with the Freedom Party under Kickl and others refused to work with the Freedom Party at all. Those efforts to form a governing alliance without the far right collapsed in the first few days of the new year and Nehammer said Saturday that he would resign.

The People’s Party then signaled that it might be open to working under Kickl. Van der Bellen said after meeting Kickl for about an hour at the presidential palace Monday that he had tasked the Freedom Party leader with holding talks with the People’s Party to form a new government.

“I did not take this step lightly,” the president told reporters. “I will continue to take care that the principles and rules of our constitution are correctly respected and adhered to.”

The far right and the conservatives have governed together before, but on previous occasions with the Freedom Party as the junior partner. Most recently, they ran Austria from 2017 to 2019 in a government in which Kickl — a 56-year-old with a taste for provocation — served as interior minister. It collapsed in a scandal surrounding the Freedom Party’s leader at the time.

Coalition talks between the far right and conservatives aren’t guaranteed to succeed, but there are no longer any other realistic options in the current parliament and polls suggest that a new election soon could strengthen the Freedom Party further.

In its election program titled “Fortress Austria,” the Freedom Party has called for the “remigration of uninvited foreigners,” for achieving a more “homogeneous” nation by tightly controlling borders and suspending the right to asylum via an emergency law.