Austria’s Freedom Party received a mandate to form a new government from the nation’s president on Monday.
The right-wing anti-immigration and euroskeptic Freedom Party, led by Herbert Kickl, won the country’s parliamentary election in September, taking 28.8 percent of the vote, knocking Chancellor Karl Nehammer’s conservative Austrian People’s Party into second place.
However, in October, President Alexander van der Bellen gave Nehammer the first chance to form a new government after his party said it wouldn’t go into government with the Freedom Party with Kickl at its helm, while others refused to work with the party under any circumstances.
After attempts to form a governing alliance without the Freedom Party collapsed in the first few days of 2025, Nehammer announced on Saturday that he planned to step down in the coming days.
Van der Bellen said after meeting with Kickl at the presidential palace in Vienna on Monday that he had tasked him with holding talks with the People’s Party to form a new government.
The president told reporters: “I did not take this step lightly. I will continue to take care that the principles and rules of our constitution are correctly respected and adhered to.”
The Freedom Party and the People’s Party have governed together before, but on those occasions, it was always the former that was the junior partner.
Most recently, they ran Austria from 2017 to 2019 in a government in which Kickl served as interior minister.
Coalition talks between the two parties aren’t guaranteed to succeed, but there are no other realistic options given the mathematics in the current parliament.
After Nehammer stated his intention to resign, the People’s Party signaled that it might be open to working with the Freedom Party under Kickl.
If Kickl’s talks fail to form a government, a snap election is likely and is also an eventuality that could further play to the party’s advantage, with opinion polls showing that support for the party has grown since September.
Following his announcement that the Freedom Party had been invited to form a government, Van der Bellen said: “The economic environment is difficult.
“Austria is in a persistent recession, unemployment is rising; at the same time, our state budget must be restructured. It’s not likely that all the measures will be popular, but they will have to be implemented.”
Van der Bellen, who was formerly spokesperson of the left-wing Green Party before becoming president, also pointed to the geopolitical threats facing Vienna and stressed the importance of “constructively strengthening European cooperation in the union, also in the interest of Austrian industry and exporters.”
As Kickl left his meeting with the president, hundreds of protesters, including Jewish students and progressive activists, booed, whistled, chanted “Nazis out,” and waved banners with slogans such as “We don’t want a right-wing extremist Austria.”
In its manifesto titled “Fortress Austria,” the Freedom Party called for the “remigration of uninvited foreigners” and the creation of a more “homogeneous” nation through tighter border controls and suspension of the right to claim asylum.
The party also said it wants to end sanctions against Moscow and is highly critical of the West’s policy of sending military aid to Ukraine.
These policies have led to the party being labeled “far-right” both by people within Austria and abroad.
It is also one of the more skeptical parties within the European Union, with Kickl having frequently criticized “elites” in Brussels and calling for some powers to be brought back from the EU to Austria.
The Freedom Party is part of a right-wing populist alliance in the European Parliament, Patriots for Europe, which also includes the parties of Hungary’s Viktor Orbán, the Netherlands’ Geert Wilders, and France’s Marine Le Pen.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
From The Epoch Times