Austria is getting a new coalition government without the far-right election winner

Al Arabiya

27-02-2025

Three parties announced Thursday that they have reached a deal to form a new centrist Austrian government five months after an election was won by a far-right party that later failed in an attempt to form an administration.
A statement from the conservative Austrian People's Party, the center-left Social Democrats and the liberal Neos said they agreed on a program for a coalition after the longest post-election hiatus in post-World War II Austria. The country's politicians broke a record of 129 days to form a new government that dated back to 1962. New People's Party leader Christian Stocker is expected to become chancellor. The parties planned to present their program later Thursday.
This was the second attempt by the three mainstream parties to form a new government without the far-right, anti-immigration, and euroskeptic Freedom Party, which in Austria's Sept. 29 election emerged for the first time as the strongest political force. It took 28.8 percent of the vote.
Their first effort collapsed in early January, prompting the resignation of conservative then-Chancellor Karl Nehammer – and setting the scene for Austria's president to ask Freedom Party leader Herbert Kickl to try to form a government. Kickl's own attempt to put together a coalition with the People's Party, which finished second in the election, collapsed in mutual recriminations on Feb. 12.
The mainstream parties, which faced the risk of a new election that was unlikely to do them any favors, resumed their effort to find common ground.
Stocker, 64, is heading for the chancellery as one of the most unlikely politicians yet to become the country's leader – a position he wasn't running for when Austrians voted in September. He spent much of his more than three decades in politics as a local politician in Lower Austria province before entering the national parliament in 2019. The highest elected office he has held so far was that of deputy mayor of Wiener Neustadt, south of Vienna.
But he became an experienced crisis manager as the general secretary of the People's Party, a position he took in 2022.
Stocker was known for his harsh criticism of Kickl before becoming party leader in the wake of Nehammer's abrupt resignation. But he then made an about-face and entered coalition talks with Kickl, under whom his party had previously refused to work.
The outgoing government, a coalition of the People's Party and environmentalist Greens now led by interim Chancellor Alexander Schallenberg, has remained in place on a caretaker basis since the election.
The People's Party and Social Democrats often governed Austria together in the past but have the barest possible majority in the parliament elected in September, with a combined 92 of the 183 seats. That was widely considered too small a cushion, and the two parties sought to bring in Neos, which has 18 seats and hasn't previously joined a national government.
The deal still needs formal approval by the leadership of the two bigger parties and a two-thirds majority of Neos members at a convention expected on Sunday.