Austrian President entrusted the task of forming the government to the far-right leader. political news

FPÖ leader Herbert Kickl has received the mandate to lead a government that will be the first far-right-led government since World War II.

Austrian President Alexander Van der Bellen has tasked Herbert Kickl, leader of the far-right Freedom Party (FPÖ), with forming a coalition government, after an attempt to form a centrist government without the FPÖ unexpectedly collapsed over the weekend.

Monday’s announcement marks a dramatic reversal by the president, a former leader of the leftist Greens who has long been critical of the FPÖ and clashed with Kikl, but left him with few options after failing to form a centrist coalition. Were.

The Eurosceptic, Russia-friendly FPÖ won last September’s parliamentary election with 29 percent of the vote.

It will now enter talks with its only potential partner, the conservative People’s Party (OVP), which is trying to lead a government for the first time since being founded in the 1950s under a leader who was a member of Hitler’s elite paramilitary force. Was a senior officer in the SS.

“I… have tasked him to start negotiations with the People’s Party to form a government,” Van der Bellen said in a televised address after meeting Kickel. “I did not take this step lightly,” he said.

Van der Bellen said, “Kickel believes he can find viable solutions… and he wants this responsibility.”

As Kickel, 56, left his meeting with the president, hundreds of protesters, including Jewish students and left-wing activists, chanted noises, whistled, chanted “Nazis out” and waved banners with slogans such as “We don’t want that.” A right-wing extremist Austria”.

Van der Bellen had angered the FPÖ by not entrusting it with forming a government immediately after the election because no potential coalition partner had immediately emerged. This task fell to the ÖVP and its leader, Chancellor Karl Nehmer. ÖVP finished second in the election.

Nehmer’s attempts to form a three- and then a two-party coalition with other centrist parties failed this weekend, prompting him to announce his resignation.

OVP is ready for talks

Analysts have said a coalition led by the far right with conservatives as junior allies is now highly likely.

Nehmer had long insisted that his party would not govern with Kikal, saying that the FPÖ leader was a conspiracy theorist and a security threat. With Nehmer’s departure, that red line has also ended.

Christian Stocker, his interim successor as ÖVP leader, said on Sunday that his party would join Kikl-led coalition talks.

“We are at the very beginning. If we are invited to these talks, the outcome of those talks is open,” said ÖVP heavyweight Wilfried Haslauer, the governor of the state of Hamburg, who stood next to Stocker in his first statement to the media as designated party leader. told broadcaster ORF.

However, if those talks fail, snap elections are likely to be called, and opinion polls show that support for the FPÖ has increased since September.

In its election programme, titled Fortress Austria, the FPÖ called for “emigration of uninvited foreigners” to achieve a more “homogeneous” nation by strictly controlling borders and suspending the right to asylum through an emergency law.

It has also called for an end to sanctions against Russia. The FPÖ is highly critical of Western military aid to Ukraine, and wants to exit the European Sky Shield Initiative, a missile defense project initiated by Germany.

Kickl has criticized “elites” in Brussels and called for some powers to be brought back from the EU to Austria.

The ÖVP and FPÖ overlap on some of these issues, particularly taking a hardline stance on immigration.