The leadership of Austria’s ruling conservatives held a crisis meeting on Sunday to choose a successor to Chancellor Karl Nehammer, who announced his resignation on Saturday as attempts to form a coalition government without the far right collapsed.
More than two hours after the meeting began, several Austrian media outlets announced that OVP general secretary Christian Stocker, 64, would take over as interim party leader. There was no immediate comment from the party.
The surprise failure of three-party and then two-party talks aimed at building a centrist coalition that could serve as a bulwark against the far-right Freedom Party (FPO) after the FPÖ’s victory in September’s parliamentary elections leaves President Alexander Van der Bellen with few options.
Snap elections with ever-growing support for the eurosceptic, Russia-friendly FPO or a U-turn in which Van der Bellen tasks FPO leader Herbert Kickl with forming a government are now the most likely options, with limited room for change. alternatives or to play for time.
“It’s not an easy situation,” Markus Wallner, governor of Vorarlberg, the westernmost of Austria’s nine provinces, told reporters before the ÖVP leaders’ meeting at the chancellor’s office.
“I believe we must do everything we can now to avoid sliding into a national crisis. »
Wallner said he opposed early elections because it would delay the arrival of a new government by months. The ÖVP governors are part of the leadership.
Nehammer insisted during and after the election campaign that his party would not govern with Kickl because he was too much of a conspiracy theorist and a security risk, while claiming that much of Kickl’s party was trustworthy.
With Nehammer gone, it is likely that whoever succeeds him will be more open to a coalition with the FPÖ, which is formally allied with Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban’s Fidesz party.
The FPÖ won the September election with around 29% of the vote, and opinion polls suggest its support has only grown since, extending its lead over the ÖVP and the Social Democrats to more than 10 points percentage, while their support has declined.
The ÖVP and FPÖ overlap on various issues, including taking a hard line on immigration, to the point where the FPÖ accuses the ÖVP of stealing its ideas.
The two governed together from late 2017 to 2019, when a CCTV scandal involving the then FPO leader caused the collapse of their coalition. At the state level, they govern together in five of the nine states, including in the moderate Vorarlberg of ÖVP Wallner.
The national dynamic is now different because if they formed an alliance, the ÖVP would for the first time be a junior partner of the FPÖ, making the ÖVP’s leadership position difficult and undesirable for many.
After early media reported that well-known figures like former party leader Sebastian Kurz, who led the last coalition with the FPÖ and has since been convicted of perjury, could become ÖVP leader, Austrian media reported overnight that they were no longer in the running.
There remain lesser-known personalities, such as the new secretary general of the Chamber of Commerce, Wolfgang Hattmannsdorfer, 45 years old.
Meanwhile, the FPÖ hammered home its message.
“Austria needs a Chancellor Kickl now,” he said on X.
The Associated Press contributed.
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