Government chaos in Austria: ÖVP and SPÖ want to negotiate without FPÖ!

Government chaos in Austria: ÖVP and SPÖ want to negotiate without FPÖ!

The signs are at the negotiation in the Federal Chancellery: from 1 p.m. the conservative ÖVP and the Social Democratic SPÖ will meet for talks after the liberal NEOS announced their retreat from the coalition negotiations. This was communicated by the Social Democratic Party and came as a surprise, also for Federal President Alexander van der Bellen. He underlined that the order to ÖVP boss Karl Nehammer unchanged to form a government and that this must be done “without delay”. The failure of the desired triple coalition is a heavy setback for the ÖVP and especially for Nehammer, which sees a way to keep the right FPÖ away from power. In this election, the Social Democrats and the ÖVP had only a wafer -thin majority of a mandate in the National Council after the FPÖ had emerged as a clear winner during the election on September 29, 2024, as Oe24 reported.

The talks about a grand coalition are now continued without the Neos after their boss Beate Meinl-Reisinger emphasized that there was no decision to reform. SPÖ boss Andreas Babler expressed himself optimistically and announced that the SPÖ was still ready to take responsibility. At the same time, Nehammer put the need for budget consolidation in the room and called for measures to relieve service providers. The FPÖ, on the other hand, sees itself confirmed by the failure of the triple talks and calls for Nehammer's resignation. Political analysts consider the situation tense; The possibility of new elections will be discussed, since this could bring this to the FPÖ an even larger number of votes, such as Tagesspiegel to report.

A central point of dispute in the previous negotiations was budget planning in a difficult economic situation, which requires both austerity measures and economic incentives. The challenges that a new government would face are enormous - from the reform of the pension system to combating unemployment, which is currently around seven percent. In this tense situation, a rapid clarification of whether and how the ÖVP and SPÖ can continue their cooperation is of crucial importance.