If no last-minute obstacle arises, Austria will have a three-party governing coalition next week for the first time in 78 years.
Five months after the last general election on September 29 and two rounds of failed coalition negotiations between parties, the conservative Austrian People’s Party, the Social Democrats (SPÖ), and the liberal NEOS (The New Austria and Liberal Forum) are about to form a new government, leaving the winning party of the general election, the far-right Freedom Party of Austria (FPÖ), in the opposition.
The political circus that followed the general election seems to have harmed the image of democracy in this Central European country.
Right after the FPÖ’s historic victory, all other parties – including the conservatives, then led by former chancellor Karl Nehammer – refused to negotiate forming a government with the FPÖ under its current leader, Herbert Kickl, whom they considered to have authoritarian tendencies.
Nehammer tried to form a coalition with the SPÖ and NEOS but failed and resigned. Unwillingness to adopt urgently needed economic reforms was the reason for the first failure to form a government.
The departure of Nehammer enabled a new constellation: The conservatives, under their new leader Christian Stocker, ended the boycott on Kickl’s FPÖ and started negotiating the formation of a right-wing government.
However, after a month of very intensive talks between both parties, these negotiations failed due to disagreements on the balance of power within the future government and the control over the Interior Ministry.
Fearing that heading to a new election would only strengthen the FPÖ, Stocker decided to turn again to the Social Democrats and later added the NEOS in a new attempt to form a center-left government.
If the SPÖ gets over its internal disputes and if the NEOS central committee approves the coalition agreement, the Stocker government will be sworn in next week.
Its main target will be to tackle the issues that brought the Austrian far Right its historic electoral victory – stopping the mass immigration to the country, returning as many refugees and illegal immigrants already in Austria to their countries of origin, foiling growing Islamist terrorist threats, and stabilizing the economy.
First time SPÖ joins a conservative government in decades
It will not be easy. After eight years in the opposition, it will be the first time in six decades that the SPÖ will be joining a conservative-headed government. SPÖ today is ideologically much more left-leaning, and it will have to swallow many compromises.
However, sharing power again and blocking the far Right might seem important enough for the party’s base to keep it from obstructing the future government’s work. According to recent polls, all the political turbulence has only made the far Right more popular right now.
GERMANY, WHICH has just emerged from a dramatic general election, followed the political developments in its southern neighbor very attentively. Last Sunday, Germany’s far-right AfD registered a historic electoral achievement, becoming the second-biggest party in the Bundestag.
In all former East Germany regions (except for Berlin), the AfD came first, receiving more than 30% of the votes. Unlike the political situation in Austria, where the FPÖ has existed since the 1950s and at times became political partners of first the Socialist Democrats and later the conservatives, the 13-year-old AfD is still boycotted by all the other parties.
During its early days, the AfD was considered by its political rivals as another protest party that would fade away with time. However, now it has become clear that the AfD is here to stay, and if nothing concrete is done to deal with Germany’s security, social, and economic problems, the AfD might follow the FPÖ and become the biggest party.
The leader of the German conservatives and the presumptive chancellor, Friedrich Merz, who failed in his attempt to stop the AfD’s growth in popularity despite adopting some of its positions on the immigration issue, openly says Germany is facing the last chance of avoiding a future far-right electoral victory.
That is why he is pressing the pedal on coalition negotiations with the beaten Social Democrat Party (SPD). Contacts between both parties, who enjoy a thin majority in the new Bundestag, started just a few hours after the results of the election were published.
Merz wants to form a new government within eight weeks. The SPD has no other alternative than to play along. Merz will then be forced to lead his government in a totally different direction from his predecessor, former chancellor Angela Merkel, taking it to the Right and not to the Left.
This will be a hard experience for the SPD. But, as in Austria, this might be the only way for it to help prevent the far Right from coming to power.