Coalition talks between Austria’s far-right Freedom party and its moderately conservative counterparts have collapsed over differences on Russia, the EU and control over intelligence operations, raising the possibility of a snap election in the central European country.
Freedom party (FPÖ) leader Herbert Kickl formally handed his mandate to try to form a government back to President Alexander Van der Bellen on Wednesday.
The decision to break off talks with the conservative People’s party (ÖVP) extends months of political turmoil in Austria, and could lead to a fresh election in which analysts predict the FPÖ would gain more ground.
“The only honest solution now is new elections,” FPÖ chair Christian Hafenecker said in a press conference on Wednesday. “The FPÖ will no longer take part in sham negotiations.”
The party, one of Europe’s longest established and most successful far-right movements, won its best-ever result at the ballot box in September.
Nearly one in three Austrians voted for the FPÖ, which campaigned to make Kickl — a firebrand leader who has run the party for the past three years on an increasingly radical platform — the “people’s chancellor”.
Support for the party surged at the expense of the ÖVP, which has presided over a stagnant economy and become mired in successive corruption scandals.
Following the election, the ÖVP tried to form a cordon sanitaire with social democratic and liberal parties. However, that strategy failed in early January, triggering the resignation of chancellor and ÖVP leader Karl Nehammer.
ÖVP officials from the party’s pro-business wing pushed to begin negotiations with the FPÖ, which they saw as sharing common ground with them on the economy and taxation.
Coalition talks between the two sides began in January shortly after Nehammer’s resignation, triggering criticism from moderate forces including some ÖVP officials who had deep reservations about making Kickl chancellor.
As talks have struggled to progress, their voices have become stronger, while leading FPÖ officials grew more confident that a second election would boost its share of the vote.
The parties’ differences on relations with Russia, the EU and domestic security were made public this weekend, when a 223-page paper on the state of negotiations was leaked to the investigative magazine Profil.
The paper reveals that the FPÖ demands an end to EU accession talks for Ukraine and the bloc’s military support for Kyiv through the European Peace Facility. It also demands that sanctions against Russia are wound back, and for EU flags to be removed from Austrian government buildings.
Domestically its requirements include the defunding of Austria’s main historical research institute into the holocaust because of its work tracking contemporary far-right extremism, which the FPÖ says is biased.
The ÖVP meanwhile insisted that it maintains control of the Austrian intelligence agency and police forces.
The FPÖ rejected that, however, with the disagreement becoming the decisive issue that led to the negotiations collapse.
The FPÖ accuses the ÖVP of attempting to thwart the will of the people, and says it does not deserve to make demands over powerful ministries.
The FPÖ controlled the interior ministry from 2017, when it was the junior partner in a coalition with the ÖVP under Sebastian Kurz. But the government collapsed in 2019 after FPÖ’s leadership were filmed in a sting operation, soliciting political favours from a fake oligarch’s niece they believed had the backing of Russian President Vladimir Putin.
The talks’ collapse returns the focus to Van der Bellen, the president whose office, while largely ceremonial, plays a decisive role in steering government negotiations following the elections.
Van der Bellen may now ask the ÖVP to reconsider a grand coalition with the social democrats. Or he may even consider allowing the formation of a minority government — possibly with the small but influential Neos, a free-market liberal reformist party.
A third option, which every party except the FPÖ is keen to avoid, would be to trigger fresh elections. Polling last month indicated the FPÖ could win as much as 37 per cent of the vote.