The acting federal chancellor of Austria, the conservative Karl Nehammer, announced this Saturday that he will resign in the coming days, both as head of the Government and as president of the People’s Party (ÖVP), after this formation has abandoned negotiations with the Social Democrats. to form a new Government. The objective was to form an alternative coalition executive to the far-right FPÖ, winner of last September’s elections with almost 29% of the votes.
Nehammer entered the chancellorship in December 2021 to replace Sebastian Kurz, who resigned before finishing his term. Since the last elections, there has been an attempt to form a coalition Government between the Popular Party, the Social Democrats (SPÖ) and the centrist Neos. The latter announced this week that they were dissociating themselves from these negotiations, a breakup of which the ÖVP has accused the SPÖ and its claims.
“We are ending negotiations with the SPÖ (Social Democratic Party) and will not continue them,” Nehammer said in a message posted on social media. “We have negotiated long and honestly,” he points out in a shared video. “It is not possible to reach an agreement with the SPÖ on essential points. The Popular Party keeps its promises: we will not accept measures that go against performance, companies or new taxes,” he emphasized.
For his part, the leader of the Social Democrats, Andreas Babler, confirmed the breakdown of the negotiations, which he attributed to internal pressure from Nehammer’s party from the wing favorable to allying with the ultranationalists, while at the same time he was convinced that “the issues pending” could have been resolved.
The failure of the attempt to form a stable Government without the radicals “is bad news for our country,” declared Babler at a press conference in Vienna, recalling that the outgoing Executive, formed by the ÖVP and the Greens (ecologists), has left “a budget hole of 18 billion euros.”
According to Babler, the conservatives would have demanded “cuts in pensions, in the (salaries of) teachers, police officers and health professionals” to reduce the deficit.
At the moment, the exact date on which Nehammer will leave his positions and who he will be replaced by is unknown.
This Friday, the leader of the liberal Neos party, Beate Meinl-Reisinger, announced that her party was abandoning the negotiations because it had not been possible to reach an agreement with ÖVP and SPÖ on key issues because they do not want to face deep reforms of the State despite the difficult economic situation.
Now a period of political instability begins for Austria, since more than three months after the legislative elections the country still has no prospects of having a new Government and it is not ruled out that it will be necessary to call new elections.
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