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Austria’s centre-right People’s Party (OVP) leader has indicated he is open to power-sharing, a day after he resigned after failing to form a central governing coalition.
OVP Secretary General Christian Stoker said on Sunday that he had been elected as the party’s new leader and was willing to negotiate with the anti-immigration pro-Russian Freedom Party (FPO), which holds the majority of seats in Austria. National elections in September.
Stocker’s statement came after Austrian President Alexander van der Bellen announced he would meet FPO leader Herbert Kickle on Monday. Observers expect van der Bellen to ask Kickle to form a coalition government, with centrist parties previously ruling out such a coalition.
“If we are invited (to hold cooperation talks by the FPÖ), we will conduct these discussions as seriously as we have done with other parties in the past,” Stoker said, stressing that his party “will take responsibility”.
The OVP will be the junior partner in the alliance with the far-right Freedom Party, which won 28.8 percent of the vote in September’s election, compared to the OVP’s 26.3 percent.
It was the first time the FPÖ, which has adopted tough policies on immigration and Ukraine’s crackdown in recent years, came out on top in national elections.
The failed negotiations have exacerbated the political situation in Austria as its economy faces a third consecutive year of contraction in 2025. Vienna faces the prospect of between €18bn and €24bn in budget cuts to repair public finances. According to the figures of the European Union Commission.
One option to break any conflict would be new elections, but that would further strengthen the FPÖ’s hand. A poll for the tabloid Kronen Zeitung after Neuhammer’s resignation showed the FPÖ rising to 37 percent of the vote in an instant, while the OVP fell to 21 percent.
Van der Bellen tasked current OVP leader and Chancellor Nehammer to form a government last year. Nehammer, who has adamantly denied any cooperation with Kickel, resigned in the early hours of Saturday after admitting that long negotiations with the Social Democrats had reached a dead end.
In the year The 52-year-old, who has served as chancellor since 2021 when former leader Sebastian Kurz was ousted amid a corruption investigation, has sought to negotiate a central coalition with the Social Democrats and the smaller liberal Neos party.
At a press conference in Vienna on Sunday, the newly appointed OVP chief, Stoker, admitted that he had been heavily critical of the far-right FPO during his campaign. But circumstances have changed and all attempts to form a government outside the FPO have failed, he said.
