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“No games, no tricks, no spoiling.” Three months after winning the parliamentary elections, Herbert Kickle appeared to have begun negotiations for a ransom rather than a coalition after receiving the go-ahead from the Austrian president to form a government.
The far-right leader will no doubt have the whip hand in negotiations with the centre-right People’s Party (OVP), whose coalition effort collapsed earlier this month. Any disruption, Kickle, threatened to lead to a new vote and, polls suggest, a landslide victory for the Freedom Party (FPÖ) over the conservatives.
Kickle won’t have it his way. The OVP insists that it agree to safeguards to protect press freedom, maintain constructive relations with the EU and continue its support for Ukraine. But the center right is not showing much backbone. The new leader of the OVP, Christian Stocker, last autumn described the Kicklen FPO as “not only a threat to democracy, but also a serious threat to Austria’s security.” After a few months, there is no such summary.
Austria is heading for its first far-right chancellor since World War II. It’s a logical progression for the country, where the Kikkel party is already centre-right in three federal governments, though not in the lead. But it would still be a historic breakthrough for the FPO beyond Austria.
It normalizes and empowers others. Populist Nationalist movements in Europe. The far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) often took its ideological cues from its established Austrian counterpart. Alice Weidel, the AfD’s chancellor candidate, has recently embraced the concept of “deportation” — the mass deportation of immigrants deemed unable to assimilate, never mind their citizenship status. The idea was first developed by the Austrian nativist ideologue Martin Sellner, and it was taken up by Kickel and his party and adopted by the extremist wing of the AfD. A group of AfD politicians and activists Weidel actually denied them when it was revealed that they had attended a meeting with Sellers in November 2023 to discuss “immigration”. Now she has made the policy her own.
Kickle It bolsters a growing group of nationalist and Eurosceptic leaders in central Europe who appear determined to oppose the liberal establishment of the EU and its pro-Ukraine foreign policy, orchestrated by Hungary’s Viktor Orbán. They may be joined by billionaire Andre Babis, who is on track to win parliamentary elections in the Czech Republic later this year. Nationalist Calin Georgescu could be elected president of Romania after the bid was annulled by the country’s constitutional court in December amid accusations by Romanian authorities that it was a Russian-backed influence campaign. Mitteleuropa’s troublemakers may not always be working together, but they are becoming impossible to ignore, let alone ignore.
Kickles Perhaps coming to power in early 2025 will highlight the weakness of the political center in Europe. Mainstream parties are struggling to find consensus among themselves to govern effectively, with parties opposed to collaborating with the far right or the populist right. Strained public finances exacerbate the problem.
In Austria, Kickel was invited to form a government because the centre-right, centre-left and liberals could not agree on how to reduce the yawning public deficit. In France, Francois Bayeu’s new small government is hanging by a thread pending a budget deal. Fundamental differences over debt legislation initially paralyzed Germany’s “traffic light” coalition and pushed the AfD to new heights.
The firewall of the main German parties against sharing power with far-right rulers remains unchanged for now. But their ability to work together in the office is severely tested. The Christian Democrats, led by Friedrich Merz, who have shifted sharply to the right, are poised to win, but will have to form a coalition with either the Social Democrats or the Greens, or perhaps both. However, some poison allies are determined to discredit the Greens.
“Austria is an example of how things should not go,” said Greens chancellor candidate Robert Habeck. “If the centrist parties can’t form a coalition and lose agreements like the work of the devil, that will help the extremists.”
“If we do not show our willingness to form a democratic coalition, we will have instability and inaction. Germany cannot afford this and we cannot expect Europe to accept it.”
Habeck is right. Compromise has become a dirty word in European politics. which never passed the lips of Herbert Kickle.
